The Pentagon’s top leaders on Thursday welcomed final congressional passage of a budget law that reduces the impact of sequestration for fiscals 2014 and 2015, but cautioned that the relief will not be enough to avoid additional cutbacks.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters in a briefing at the Pentagon that the Bipartisan Budget Agreement (BBA) approved by the Senate on Wednesday allows the military to focus on the key areas of readiness and modernization, but will have to continue with cuts in other areas such as personnel compensation.
“We will continue to press ahead with our efforts to cut DoD overhead and infrastructure costs, improve our acquisition enterprise and continue to make the tough choice on force structure,” Hagel said.
The BBA, which cleared the House of Representatives last week, scales back sequestration in 2014 by $21 billion and caps the Pentagon’s spending level for fiscal 2014 at $520 billion. That still leaves the Pentagon $32 billion short of its requested spending for the rest of the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The BBA reduces sequestration in fiscal 2015 by $10 billion.
“There were three things we really need in order to manage the financial affairs of the department and the military, and they are certainty, time and flexibility,” Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the briefing. “The Bipartisan Budget Agreement gives us a little of each of those so it is a welcome event here at the end of 2013.”
Dempsey said the bill will allow the Pentagon to restore near-term readiness and readiness already lost to spending reductions, but warned that sequestration as of now remains in place throughout the rest of the decade and will continue to impact the military’s ability to plan for the future.
“The remainder of sequestration still lurks on the horizon beyond these two years,” he said. “So some of the force structure reductions that we had planned based on sequestration will march on.”
Going forward, Hagel said the Pentagon will consult closely with the House and Senate appropriations committees to pursue its wishes as line-item spending bills are developed ahead of the Jan. 15 deadline for Congress to pass appropriations bills for fiscal 2014. Although the appropriators can ignore any requests, Hagel said the Pentagon will voice what it believes are important priorities already identified in sequestration planning exercises.
“We’re still talking about 2014. We’re living in that right now,” Hagel said. Hagel and Dempsey declined to identify the specific areas where they will seek sequestration relief in the line-item appropriations bill.
The two leaders said they will also be outlining and making a similar case as the Pentagon prepares to roll out its fiscal 2015 budget request early next year.
The BBA allows lawmakers to increase the total level of spending in appropriations bills for fiscal 2014 that passed earlier this year to $520 billion. The full House had passed a $512 billion appropriations bill in July, while the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $516 billion measure–though it never got a full Senate vote. Those figures do not include the $85.8 billion approved by the House and the $77.8 billion approved by SAC for overseas contingency operations like the war in Afghanistan.
“We are in a divided Congress. … It is a compromise, and the Senate Appropriations Committee under the leadership of Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) are doing the best with what we have, which was a heck of a lot better than what the House Republicans wanted us to do,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chairwoman of the subcommittee on transportation, housing and urban development, said Thursday during a press conference. “So we’re working hard, I know [Sen. Dick Durbin] and his [defense subcommittee], and me and my committee on HUD, to put together bills that can reflect the best we can do under the circumstances we’re under.”