The year ends on some positive notes.

• Author: McKinley, Craig R.
• Position: President's Perspective

As we enter the holiday season and reflect back on the year, we all have much to be thankful for: family, friends and the safety and security of living in our great country--one that is clearly the "indispensible nation," as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once described it. If you enjoy the fruits of being an American, then you are by all objective measures a most fortunate human being.

But moving past the personal to the professional, there have been some positive developments during the past few weeks that pertain to our national security and the immediate health and future prospects of the nation's defense industry.

In late October, Congress agreed to a budget blueprint that is very much in the nation's interest. Former Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, played a major role in pulling together sufficient support to pass budget legislation in the House by a vote of 266-167, followed the next day by Senate action that passed 64-35. Shortly afterwards, President Barack Obama signed the bill into law.

Budget resolutions do not need to be signed by the president, but this particular legislation required his signature as it included two significant items. It included language that raised the debt limit and pushed out the need to reconsider it into 2017, which would be the early days of the next administration. This means that an item that has served as a flash point over the past few years will now be removed from the political agenda for the remainder of the Obama administration.

And perhaps of more immediate concern, the legislation raised the caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act, thereby avoiding the threat of sequestration for two years.

This action, which may very well mean the beginning of the end of the caps stipulated by the act, allotted an additional $80 billion over two years, evenly divided between defense and non-defense discretionary spending, a step that greatly reduces the pressures being felt within the defense budget, particularly the modernization accounts.

Recall that in my September column, I strongly advocated that Congress follow its own procedures in crafting the annual budget, a process normally called "regular order," where budget resolutions are followed by appropriations bills that the president signs into law. I was heartened when new House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said it "would allow us to return to regular order in our budget process."

As the former chairman of the Budget...