Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is alarmed the Pentagon may seek a decreased level of funding for missile defense in the budget proposal it will unveil Wednesday.
“I think that’s a serious mistake, particularly since the administration’s committed to additional missile-defense installations on the West Coast,” the senior Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) member told reporters Tuesday.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced March 15 that the Pentagon will boost missile-defense efforts–including burying more missile interceptors in Alaska and conducting environmental-impact studies on a potential East Coast facility–in response to Iran and North Korea’s work to develop long-range missiles (Defense Daily, March 18). Still, the Pentagon is faced with a contracting budget. According to Bloomberg News, it will request $9.16 billion for missile-defense programs in fiscal year 2014, roughly $550 million less than $9.71 billion in FY ’13, which ends Sept. 30.
Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey will unveil the Pentagon’s FY ’14 budget proposal to reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday at 1 p.m. Hours before then, Hagel will have breakfast with the “Big 8,” the chairmen and ranking members of the armed services and defense appropriations subcommittees in the House and Senate, according to SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.).
The Pentagon is expected to request a budget that ignores the $475 billion spending cap dictated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and “sequestration” budget cuts that started March 1 (Defense Daily, April 8). President Barack Obama wants to end sequestration, which is set to reduce planned defense spending by $500 billion over a decade, though Congress has not agreed to an alternate deficit-cutting plan.
Under sequestration, Pentagon spending would be capped at roughly $475 billion for FY ’14, but the budget coming out Wednesday is expected to be at least $50 billion larger. If that larger budget is signed into law, the excess money would be subject to across-the-board cuts, according to Todd Harrison, the senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) think tank.
McCain, who until recently was the ranking member of the SASC, said one of his major concerns regarding the forthcoming Pentagon budget is the impact sequestration is having on it.
“Obviously the effects of sequestration continue to be devastating and I continue to oppose it, and I do not understand why members of Congress are not more concerned,” McCain said.
Levin declined on Tuesday to discuss the budget before its release.
The House Armed Services Committee will be the first congressional panel to hold a hearing on the FY ’14 Pentagon budget with Hagel and Dempsey, which will be Thursday.