The Defense Department will submit a fiscal year 2016 budget that is above the sequester spending caps and includes all the same efficiencies Congress has rejected for several years now, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said Wednesday at the Defense One Summit.
“We need additional topline for the emerging and new requirements,” he said. “Six months ago we weren’t talking about a European Reassurance Initiative, we weren’t talking about spending 18 months or so in West Africa combating Ebola, and we weren’t talking about a protracted probably three- or four-year campaign in the Middle East again. So we do have some new requirements. [Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel] rolled out a nuclear posture review, that has a price tag. We know we’ve got some gaps to fill in space. And so there’s just some new requirements.
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“And then the other thing we need is, we need support to make the reforms that actually the Joint Chiefs linked arms and said okay, we got it, we’ve got to get our manpower costs under control,” Dempsey said. “We submit [budget efficiencies], but we don’t get them. And then when we book them as part of the budget, and then they come back to you, then you’ve got to find it someplace else in the budget. And that’s getting a little more tricky.”
Despite the challenges of writing a budget knowing that Congress will reject efforts to save money through compensation reform, base closures and health care changes, Dempsey said he has no choice but to continue doing the same thing year after year and hoping Congress eventually decides to allow the efficiencies.
“We’re going to do it again, because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. He noted there were still probably more efficiencies to be found, but as Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work explained last week, there are about $70 billion in efficiencies over five years that the Pentagon has already identified and Congress continues to reject.
Dempsey also noted the need to eliminate sequestration, saying that both the amount and the mechanism of the cuts are destructive to the military.
However, he did not express anger at Congress for imposing the cuts on the Pentagon. Rather, he said he had done some soul searching and realized he failed in his duty to convey his message about the damage sequestration would cause.
“I’m not blaming anyone for the situation in which I find myself. It’s not Congress…I’ve been introspective about this and on some level I haven’t been persuasive enough,” he said. “I’ll accept some of the responsibility here for failing on two counts: one is, I’ve been the chairman for three years. In my first year or two, if you recall, we would go over to Capitol Hill and we would try to articulate risk. What risk are we taking because of our inability to build a more sustainable budget over time. And I swung and missed. Some of it is because risk is such an elusive, ephemeral word almost. But anyway, I swung and missed. Nobody really took notice that I was talking about risk. And then last year we said, that didn’t work, maybe we ought to talk about readiness. We can articulate the fact that of the X number of ships only so many are ready. Of the X number of brigade combat teams, the X number of amphibious ready groups, the X number of fighter squadrons, only X number are ready. And everybody said, oh, that’s interesting. And I swung and missed.
“So frankly, I’m trying to decide for myself how to adapt my narrative to explain to the American people that there’s two things happening that they ought to take interest in,” he said. “One is, we are going to be able to provide fewer options…And then the other thing is, besides talking about risk and readiness and options, is the effect on the all-volunteer force.”