The president is making a new push after Congress blocked attempts to close Guantánamo during his first term.

"We are boxed in, which I don’t like,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.).

A bill to arm the Syrian opposition cleared its first legislative hurdle, easily passing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) is demanding that the Navy face up to fiscal realities by overhauling its shipbuilding plan. 

The Topline: The Pentagon's financial future got a bit clearer on Tuesday as House defense lawmakers took their first shots at the Defense Department's fiscal 2014 budget plan. 

Four of the six House Armed Services subcommittees weighed in on the DOD budget plan, crafting legislation on everything from the Navy's 30-year shipbuilding plan to curbing sexual assaults in the military.

A staffer declined to comment as to how soon that U.S. special operations team could come before the oversight subcommittee.

The full House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved the first of 12 annual spending bills for 2014, a $73.3 billion measure funding military construction and veterans affairs programs.

The bill is the least controversial of the 12 annual bills and, reflecting that, it was approved on a voice vote.

The bill increases spending by $1.4 billion above the enact 2013 level. This comes out to about $2.4 billion more in spending compared to the post-sequestration level the government is currently operating on after automatic cuts came into effect on March 1. 

Democrats supported the bill but were adamantly opposed to an overall 2014 spending plan for all 12 bills that the GOP majority also adopted at the same markup.That plan has deep cuts to social programs to pay for increased defense spending. 

The veterans affairs bills makes an attempt to address an embarrassing backlog in veterans benefits claims.

It supports an increase of 94 claims processor and requires the VA to report monthly to Congress on the backlog. 

“They may as well get ready to be constantly harassed and frankly starved moneywise until they get this right,” committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who is running for Senate, offered an amendment to cut claims processor pay by 25 percent if a 25 percent reduction in the claims backlog is not reduced 180 days after Oct. 1.  He withdrew the amendment but committee leaders promised to work with him on the proposal as the bill comes to the House floor in early June.

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), whose district contains a huge number of federal workers,  offered an amendment to end the three year pay freeze for federal workers covered by the bill. The amendment was defeated on a 23 to 25 vote with Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) voting with Democrats. 

The Armed Services Personnel subpanel included the provision changing the military’s post-trial review process as well as several other measures in order to address the rise of sexual assault in the military.

The legislation was released by Personnel Subcommittee Chairman Joe Wilson (R-S.C) and will be marked up by the panel on Wednesday.

Lawmakers have introduced roughly a dozen legislative proposals to tackle military sexual assault, which are going to be considered in the annual Defense authorization bill.

House Armed Services ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) slammed the panel’s closed-door briefing about Benghazi on Tuesday, calling it a “redundant waste of time.”

“It is my hope that today’s briefing is the last act in a sad attempt to manufacture a scandal,” Smith said in a statement as the briefing got underway. “For nearly eight months, we have watched Republicans desperately and obsessively search for a scandal, which has not appeared.”

Smith’s comments come amid partisan fighting over last year’s attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed. Republicans accuse the Obama administration of hiding the truth about what happened, while Democrats say the GOP is conducting a political witch hunt.