Congress tries to hide a submarine

America’s next generation of nuclear submarines are supposed to have stealth capabilities. But at $5 billion a pop, they’re hard to hide in a budget.

That doesn’t mean Congress can’t try.

 When the House of Representatives debates its 2016 defense spending bill next week, there will be a floor battle over an arcane gimmick designed to keep these subs of the future –the Navy’s most expensive shipbuilding program ever - out of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget. It’s not a partisan or an ideological fight, just a bit of Washington gamesmanship that in another context might not be particularly noteworthy, except that it involves Pentagon-sized sums of money, and could have a major impact on Pentagon spending down the road.

The dispute has its roots in the Navy’s need for a lethal replacement for its Ohio-class submarines, which were built in the 1970s and still carry a big chunk of America’s nuclear arsenal under the seas. As the subs approach retirement age, the Navy is gearing up to build their 21st-century successors, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will end up costing taxpayers more than $90 billion. That’s more than three decades worth of funding for all of America’s national parks, or about three times the annual Iranian defense budget.

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/06/congress-tries-to-hide-a-submarine-000069