It was a classic good news/bad news story in Washington last week.

The week started with rumors that House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga., was planning to draft a budget resolution that would conform with the Budget Control Act. And that would be good news, indeed. After all, the Budget Control Act is the law of the land, much as those who favor increases to Pentagon spending would like to pretend otherwise.

The first bit of bad news is that the president’s fiscal year 2016 budget request pretends the Budget Control Act doesn’t exist. The fiscal year 2016 Pentagon request blows through the cap (of roughly $500 billion) and requests another $35 billion. In that light, hearing that Price is considering adhering to the Budget Control Act when drafting the budget resolution is a hopeful sign.

For those who don’t live and breathe the federal budget, the budget resolution is a step in the process codified by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. (And for those of us who do live and breathe the federal budget, it’s also known for changing the start of the federal fiscal year from July 1 to Oct. 1.) The two budget committees in the House and Senate are tasked with drafting and reporting budget resolutions which set forth budget authority and outlays (actual spending levels) for each functional category of the federal government. These spending levels then set the toplines with which the Appropriations Committees and subcommittees must work when drafting the 12 appropriations bills that keep the federal government funded.

More heartening was a statement by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., chairman of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, during a hearing on the budget request of the U.S. Navy. Noting the fact that the request exceeds the budget caps, he said, “With respect, I will advise you that we will cut the $13 billion with you or we will cut it without you, but we need to do the job the law requires us to do. We are bound to follow the law until instructed otherwise.”

But hard on the heels of this evidence of fiscal discipline breaking out in the House came the release of a letter to Price from 31 Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee. Their recommendation is a Pentagon base budget number of $577 billion, as well as nearly $51 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations funding. That would add up to more than $625 billion in spending for the Pentagon in fiscal year 2016.

To keep up with the Joneses in the House, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., of the Senate Armed Services Committee sent a similar letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. The Senate letter takes a slightly different approach, asking that the resolution be drafted at the pre-Budget Control Act level of $577 billion for the base budget but only asking for “necessary funds” for overseas contingency operations.

My organization, Taxpayers for Common Sense, immediately drafted letters to the chairmen of both Budget Committees urging adherence to the Budget Control Act when drafting the fiscal year 2016 budget resolutions. Eight other fiscally conservative organizations joined our effort and co-signed letters to the two budget committees. All nine organizations agree that a budget resolution that exceeds the modest caps in the Budget Control Act is fiscally irresponsible and unnecessary. 

While it may seem obvious, I want to restate some of the reasons we need fiscal discipline both across the board and at the Pentagon in particular. First, the most obvious, with an $18 trillion debt, our annual interest payments are more than $200 billion and growing. The longer we continue our habit of spending more money than we take in as a government, the faster those interest payments will grow.

But beyond this point, let’s remember the way the Budget Control Act works. It did not arbitrarily require across-the-board sequestration cuts; rather, it set budget caps to allow Congress to set priorities within those caps. Only if Congress breaks those caps does the mechanism of sequestration, with those thoughtless cut-the-good-with-the-bad haircuts, come into play. So unless Congress wants to repeal or amend the Budget Control Act, setting budget levels above the caps sets us up for the self-inflicted injury of sequestration.

I hope the House Budget Committee will stick to the course it appears to be on and present a budget resolution that complies with the Budget Control Act. And I’ll be writing more about this topic, whichever way this goes.