The Pentagon may delay the release of its next budget request–possibly until March–as it faces potential across-the-board spending cuts that were delayed but not eliminated by a deficit deal President Barack Obama signed Wednesday night.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said yesterday that because it is unclear if those delayed “sequestration” cuts will be made to defense spending starting in March, the Pentagon is uncertain about how to proceed with its official budget request for the fiscal year starting in October, which the White House typically sends to Congress in early February.
“We are consulting with (the White House’s Office of Management and Budget) OMB right now on a variety of matters to include the submission of the (fiscal year 2014) FY ’14 budget,” Little told Defense Daily. He said the “timing isn’t exactly certain” because the Pentagon has the “specter of sequestration looming.”
Little said Pentagon officials will do “everything we can” to meet their obligation to submit a timely FY ‘14 budget request to Congress.
Obama signed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 into law late on Wednesday. Democrats in the House and Senate came together on Tuesday to support the massive deficit deal, which prevents middle-class tax hikes and delays the start of sequestration by two months–until the beginning of March.
Sequestration refers to decade-long cuts of $1.2 trillion to defense and non-defense spending that were brought about by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and were slated to start on Wednesday. Obama and many lawmakers oppose sequestration, which would have cut roughly $55 billion from planned defense spending each year in an indiscriminate, across-the-board manner.
The newly approved deficit accord pays for the two-month break from the defense and non-defense sequestration cuts in part with $12 billion in other reductions to Pentagon and domestic spending. The $6 billion of those reductions that will be made to security-related spending won’t all fall in this fiscal year, and some of those reductions will apply to FY ’14, which starts Oct. 1. Thus, some analysts have downplayed the impact that $12 billion reduction–which funds the two-month sequestration delay–will have on Pentagon budgeting.
However, the likelihood of the actual sequestration cuts starting in March after the two-month delay is causing concern in and outside of the Pentagon. Analysts have cited different estimates for the revised FY ’13 defense-cut amount for FY ’13, if Congress and Obama don’t stop sequestration from occurring in March. The smaller figure could be $43.5 billion, according to Gordon Adams, a fellow at the Stimson Center think tank and former Clinton administration official. The size of the cut in subsequent years would remain at roughly $55 billion.
Defense-budget experts also are noting the potential for additional and separate Pentagon cuts being made this month. That’s because the current level of defense spending for FY ’13–dictated by a continuing resolution temporarily funding the government until late March–exceeds caps set in the Budget Control Act of 2011 by more than $10 billion according to some calculations.
The Pentagon received some additional good budget news from the White House Wednesday night, when Obama signed into law the long-delayed FY ‘13 defense authorization bill. The measure sets defense policy and authorizes funding for Pentagon programs for the fiscal year that started last October.
The law authorizes $1.7 billion in funding beyond what Obama initially requested for FY ‘13, and instead supports a $552.2 billion base defense budget along with $88.5 billion in war funding.
The measure contains multiple provisions the White House objected to, on topics ranging from weapons programs to military detainees. Obama issued a so-called signing statement Wednesday night saying while he supports “the vast majority of the provisions” in the act, he does not “agree with them all.”
“In a time when all public servants recognize the need to eliminate wasteful or duplicative spending, various sections in the act limit the Defense Department’s ability to direct scarce resources towards the highest priorities for our national security,” he said. “For example, restrictions on the Defense Department’s ability to retire unneeded ships and aircraft will divert scarce resources needed for readiness and result in future unfunded liabilities.” By failing to approve some cost-saving measures, he said, “the Congress may force reductions in the overall size of our military forces.”
The new defense authorization law contains multiple changes to the Pentagon’s previous plans for weapons programs. It bans the Pentagon from funding the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program with Germany and Italy in FY ’13, stops the retirement of some Air Force aircraft, and blocks the cancellation of the Global Hawk Block 30 spy drone. The measure allows the Pentagon to continue with biofuel development and directs it to study an additional U.S. missile-defense site. It further authorizes added funding for M1 Abrams tanks to prevent a production shutdown and allows the Navy to use special incremental funding for the Virginia-class submarine program (Defense Daily, Dec. 19).
Obama is on vacation in Hawaii but had the defense bill with him, so he signed the actual document, according to a White House press pool report. He did not have the fiscal-cliff bill with him, though, and signed remotely that via the so-called auto pen.