The Pentagon has created a strategy blueprint to combat House Speaker Paul Ryan's defense spending proposal, according to Politico.
The May 13 memo said "We should attack" Ryan's proposal, "and be prepared to play hardball opposing it," according to Politico.
It also calls for "public and private pressure" to ensure the House Republican proposal does not become law.
The document suggests finding ways to undermine the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, for pitting House and Senate lawmakers against each other, and enlisting military officials to emphasize the claim that Ryan's budget "gimmick" could make the nation's defenses less strong.
According to Politico, the memo was prepared for Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Deputy Secretary Bob Work and the document appears to show feuding over the budget along party lines. The memo showed the Defense Department engaging in election-year politics, which it usually seeks to avoid.
The memo acknowledges that having Secretary Carter lobby Democrats "risks the appearance of partisanship."
The strategy in the document will being to take shape as Congress returns to work after the Labor Day weekend. The House and Senate are working to decide whether to include an extra $18 billion in funding in the last defense authorizations and appropriations bill they send to President Barack Obama, reports Politico.
The Obama administration is against increases in the Pentagon's budget with no matching increase in domestic spending, Politico reported.
According to Politico, a Republican aide to Texas Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services, Mac Thornberry said, "This isn't a game of poker—this is national security. They see the chairman's legitimate oversight concerns and policy concerns that he is trying to address in the bill as nothing more than a talking point."
The memo describes Obama's threat to veto Ryan's proposal as "the principal weapon at our disposal."
The House's move to using a supplemental war spending account to avoid spending limits on other agencies is at issue. The House budget would fund half of the activities in Afghanistan and Iraq for the next year, leaving the next administration to pay for the rest of the year.
The New York Times reported that Democrats are likely to block the military spending bill on the Senate floor.
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