If Congress doesn’t pass an omnibus spending bill this year to fully fund the federal government, it would result in “significant harm to our people and our programs and would cause harm to our national security and our competitiveness,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote Sunday in a series of letters to Democratic leaders and top Democratic appropriators, according to Politico National Security Daily.

Since the fiscal year ended in September, DOD and all other agencies have been operating under a continuing resolution that expires Dec. 16. House and Senate appropriators are trying to negotiate a package deal on all 12 spending bills but may have to resort to another CR – for a week or longer; some Republicans have said they want to push the spending bills into next year when they’ll have control of the House, as Military Times reported.

“We must break this pattern of extensive inaction,” Austin wrote in the letters. “We can’t outcompete China with our hands tied behind our back three, four, five or six months of every fiscal year. Since I unveiled our National Defense Strategy in March, I have found strong support for it in Congress, in our force, across America and with our allies and partners. Our FY 2023 budget was designed precisely to make that strategy real. But we can’t implement that strategy unless and until the budget is funded.”

DOD photo by Lisa Ferdinando