A key House lawmaker wants the White House to provide more clarity on when it will unveil its next Pentagon budget, which is delayed amid the uncertainty about possible “sequestration” funding cuts.
“It is paramount that the administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2014 is submitted to Congress as soon as possible, so that we may begin our work,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) said in a Jan. 11 letter to Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. He requests Zients’ “best estimate on when you expect the budget to be delivered.”
Pentagon officials said last week they don’t expect to send Congress their FY ’14 budget request in early February, as is customary. Some sources said the proposal may not come until March, when Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration will face multiple budget quandaries. Those include the scheduled start of $500 billion in longterm “sequestration” cuts to the Pentagon, the expiration of a temporary FY ’13 continuing resolution funding the entire federal government, and the nation reaching its borrowing limit.
House members are back in Washington this week, during the early days of the new, 113th Congress. The Senate will return next week.
McKeon quizzed Zients about why the administration is now delaying its FY ’14 budget request because of the looming sequestration threat after it previously insisted, for most of last year, that it would not plan for the potential cuts. Sequestration is unpopular in Congress and the White House, but Democrats and Republicans have not been able to agree on an alternate plan to reduce the federal deficit that eliminates those reductions.
Those $500 billion in defense cuts were scheduled to start in January, but the deficit deal Congress approved on Jan. 1 cancelled the first two months of sequestration.
McKeon and other HASC Republicans were upset the Pentagon did not conduct detailed contingency planning last year for the impact of sequestration. They helped pass the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012, which called for the White House to report to lawmakers on the potential impacts of the across-the-board sequestration cuts. Yet the report the administration submitted last September did not provide the level of detail some lawmakers wanted, including how defense programs would be impacted by the reduced funding (Defense Daily, Sept. 17, 2012).
“If sequester was not enough of a threat to do any planning or to comply with (the Sequestration Transparency Act), I can only assume it is not enough of a threat to delay your budget,” McKeon wrote to the acting OMB head.
Congressional panels often begin months of budget hearings in February, after receiving the Pentagon’s massive yearly spending proposal.
The HASC chairman said the “magnitude of current defense cuts further complicates” the congressional review efforts. He maintained a month delay in submitting the budget request “could well put the completion” of the FY ’14 defense authorization bill “at risk.”
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced last Thursday that the Pentagon has begun “an intensive planning effort” to prepare for the potential sequestration cuts in March. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter issued a memo that day directing Pentagon officials to take steps now, which could be reversed, to soften the blow of sequestration if it does kick in. Those include reassessing existing contracts with industry as well as cancelling ship, aircraft, and vehicle maintenance plans. Carter also directed the military services and components to submit sequestration “implementation” plans to Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale by Feb. 1.
Zients, meanwhile, sent a memo yesterday to the heads of departments and agencies across the federal government about “planning for uncertainty with respect to fiscal year 2013 budgetary resources.” He cited the pending sequestration cuts and the March 27 expiration of the FY ’13 continuing resolution funding the Pentagon and rest of the government.
“At this time, agencies do not have clarity regarding the manner in which Congress will address these issues or the amount of budgetary resources that will be available through the remainder of the fiscal year,” Zients wrote. “Until Congress acts, agencies must continue to prepare for the possibility that they will need to operate with reduced budgetary resources.”
He called for federal agencies to “intensify efforts to identify actions that may be required should sequestration occur.” He provided guiding principles for federal agencies to follow when preparing post-sequestration plans. Those include reviewing contracts for cost savings and being “cognizant” of the requirements of the Worker Readjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to notify employees before foreseeable layoffs.
Yesterday at the White House, Obama chided congressional Republicans for tying the debate over raising that debt limit to the separate matters of sequestration cuts and cutting the deficit.
During a press conference, the president reiterated his desire to come to agreement with Congress on a plan to cut the federal deficit that stops the sequestration cuts from starting. Obama called for a “balanced package of savings from spending on health care and revenues from closing (tax) loopholes” that does not cut education and entitlement spending. Republicans have resisted raising revenues.