House eyes higher dollar thresholds for arms sales notices to Congress – By Bryant Harris (Federal Times) / Jan 31, 2024
WASHINGTON ― A House task force established to speed up the foreign military sales process will debate its first bill in the Foreign Affairs Committee next week, marking what could be the next legislative step in untangling arms deals backlogs.
The bill raises the dollar threshold at which the president can approve an arms transfer without notifying Congress, while requiring the drawdown of weapons from U.S. stockpiles to compensate for delayed foreign military sales. It has generated pushback among some arms control advocates who fear the legislation would chip away at a key congressional oversight mechanism used to track weapons deals with other countries
As head of the task force established last year, Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., introduced the Tiger Act in December.
“The tempo of conventional high-intensity war that we’re seeing means that countries are burning through their defense equipment much faster,” a Waltz staffer told Defense News, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the bill. “That is something that we on the Hill were taken by surprise [by] in places like Ukraine: the shortage of precision munitions, the shortage of 155mm shells.”
