By Jen DiMascio
With a lame-duck president in office and election season in full swing, next week’s Pentagon budget rollout is likely to be something of a snooze, but the real action may come when Congress takes up the near record-high defense spending request.
The Pentagon’s top line is likely to fall between $511 billion, the projection the Defense Department’s previous future years defense plan, and $516 billion, according to Steven Kosiak, vice president at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. That represents about a five percent real increase in the budget, which Kosiak called a “healthy rate of growth.”
Next week, the Pentagon is also expected to send to Congress an initial supplemental request for $70 billion, and it is not clear what will happen in terms of war funding later in the year. At that time, the administration could ask for more funding, or it could punt the issue to the next president, he said during CSBA’s annual pre-budget release briefing.
The administration’s request will be presented to Congress Feb. 4.
Being the 11th year of continuous growth for defense spending, and depending on what happens with war supplemental requests during the year, it could set another record, Kosiak said.
Most defense budgets shy away from making big cuts to major procurement programs. With the Bush administration on its way out the door, there is even less motivation to make any difficult choices.
As such, Robert Work, vice president for strategic studies at CSBA, called this year’s request a “transition budget,” that he is looking beyond.
“I don’t really think too much about this budget, I think about what happens after the budget comes out,” Work said. “The things that Congress will deal with this year are things that they think will influence votes, because that is the way our process works.”
Potential areas for consideration are industrial base issues affecting DoD this year including whether to maintain the C-17 Globemaster cargo aircraft production line and extending for another year the F-22 Raptor fighter jet line, as well as Navy shipbuilding.
“Whether or not you keep the C-17 line open–that’s where the intersection of the election will come in, and [Congress] might divert money from other programs to keep the line open,” Work said. The same is true for manufacturing of the F-22, the production line for which is scheduled to close after FY ’09. According to Work, lawmakers have made a “relatively prudent case” for maintaining the ability to produce F-22s until the Joint Strike Fighter is proven.
In addition, funding for the Transformational Satellite program, which is key to the Pentagon’s future networking activities, is easy for lawmakers to cut, since its budget stretches out over many years, he said.
“All of these things are coming to fruition,” Work said. “This is when Congress really gets into the act–especially in an election year.”