The good news: During recent budget resolution debates, Congress went on record saying the military needs more funding.

The bad news: That doesn't really fix anything.

Under separate resolutions backed by the House and Senate, lawmakers offered no alternative to looming mandatory spending caps on defense programs, instead opting to work around the problem by boosting "off-the-books" overseas contingency funds by tens of billions of dollars.

For Pentagon planners, that compromise has been greeted with disappointed shrugs. Officials have been intensely lobbying for an end to the spending caps for months, gaining support from defense hawks in Congress but little traction with fiscal conservatives.

Not fixing sequestration leaves them with a long-term planning problem, and at least another year of lobbying to get all the money they insist they need. Still, they admit that having more funding in any form is better than having less.

For troops and their families, the bottom line remains more of the same uncertainty and waiting.

"We're back in the same boat." said Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "This is a one-year fix, and we're right back at the fight again next year."

Republican leaders have touted a budget resolution as an important return to regular order in the annual budget process, but they serve more as a guideline for future appropriations moves. The resolution does not need White House approval, and does not authorize any specific spending.

Mackenzie Eaglen, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said that means plenty of funding fights in months to come, even with a promised agreement in how defense programs will be funded next year.

"Even if they're promising full funding now, the debate is only going to be if it can be funded downward," Eaglen said. "And the president still could veto a defense budget that doesn't repeal sequestration. So we don't know how this ends. The only certainty for defense budgets in recent years has been uncertainty."

On March 26 — as the Senate was debating its budget resolution — Defense Secretary Ash Carter dismissed the spending work-around, saying any proposal to "shoehorn defense base funding into [overseas contingency] accounts would fail to solve the problem and undermine … responsible long-term planning."

He previously offered support for a presidential veto of any federal budget that leaves sequestration caps in place.

But Eaglen said the path laid out in the budget resolutions shows a Congress that seems content to do that for now, pushing off a long-term solution to future years.

That's been the case since the Budget Control Act of 2011 ushered in sequestration, and could be the case for years to come. If no solution is found this year, defense experts are skeptical one can be found in 2016 amid the heat of congressional and presidential election campaigns.

"We're probably still years away from feeling like the defense budget is on the upswing," Eaglen said.

Harrison said one silver lining with the budget resolution plans is that they avoid haphazard across-the-board budget cuts, by keeping defense spending totals at the mandated caps.

"So we're not going to see the furloughs and training cancellations and problems we've seen in the past," he said. Troops "will know where the cuts are coming from, and have some flexibility."

What they will not have, he said, is any hope for an end to the ongoing budget frustration.

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

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