Pentagon leaders still are working on a wide-reaching analysis, which initially was due May 31, of how the defense budget would be impacted by sequestration cuts.
Yesterday’s announcement from the Pentagon that the Strategic Choices and Management Review will not be released for weeks came as Congress is poised to start altering the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2014 budget proposal next week. President Barack Obama’s administration did not factor the $500 billion in decade-long “sequestration” cuts into that budget request–to the chagrin of defense-minded lawmakers who want the Pentagon to do more contingency planning for sequestration, which already started in March.
The Pentagon’s internal Strategic Choices and Management Review, though, has been looking at how the defense budget would fare until multiple funding scenarios, including sequestration.
Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters yesterday that Pentagon leaders continue to work on the review, and its findings are not expected to be released for a couple weeks.
“They continue to analyze and work through the potential decisions to be made,” Warren reportedly said at the Pentagon.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in March directed Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey to conduct the review by reexamining the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance in light of current budget uncertainty. It is intended to consider multiple budgeting scenarios, including Obama’s FY ’14 budget proposal–which does away with sequestration in a way Republicans don’t like.
Hagel said during his first major policy speech as defense secretary, on April 3, that as the review was underway it was clear to him the Pentagon cannot avoid making significant changes to its weapons purchasing.
He said at the National Defense University in Washington that was “already clear” to him “that any serious effort to reform and reshape our defense enterprise must confront the principal drivers of growth in the (Defense) Department’s base budget–namely acquisitions, personnel costs, and overhead.” He said he is concerned the military’s modernization strategy depends on weapons systems “that are vastly more expensive and technologically risky” than intended.
Of course, the Pentagon’s attempts to scale back or modify weapons programs are often resisted by Congress.
The House Armed Services Committee will spend at least a day marking up its FY ’14 defense authorization bill next week, starting Wednesday morning. The Senate Armed Services Committee then it slated to hold it subcommittee and full-committee markups of that same policy-setting legislation the following week.
The powerful House Appropriations Defense subcommittee also is expected to mark up its version of the budget-setting FY ’14 defense appropriations bill next week.
Thus, in the next two weeks military-budget watchers will have a good sense of how lawmakers are reacting to the Pentagon’s proposed weapons cuts and stance toward budgeting without sequestration.