By Emelie Rutherford
As the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) prepared to take Congress’ first whack at the Pentagon’s proposed fiscal year 2012 policy bill this week, its chairman is standing firm in his opposition to defense budget cuts.
HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) wrote in a USA Today op-ed last Friday that he will not accept $400 billion in security budget cuts, which President Barack Obama wants by 2023, “without a fight.”
“The defense cuts of the recent past, present, and future will weaken our nation, leave us vulnerable to attack and hasten in an unmistakable era of American decline,” McKeon said.
“There are reasonable ways to cut waste in the defense budget,” he wrote. “Oversight and acquisition reform can help us spend defense dollars smartly. But carving out critical capabilities while our nation is at war is simply wrongheaded.”
While McKeon’s criticism was focused on the $400 billion in security cuts Obama wants in future years, observers said it nonetheless shows the HASC chairman’s mindset going into his committee’s markups of the FY ’12 defense authorization bill–the first Pentagon bill-writing session under his leadership since Republicans took control of the House.
The HASC is expected to agree to the size of Obama’s $582.6 billion FY ’12 defense budget proposal, but not its content.
McKeon has said he and his HASC subcommittee chairmen found “billions of dollars” in Pentagon savings that they will call for reinvesting in “higher national security priorities” when they mark up the FY ’12 defense authorization bill (Defense Daily, April 14).
He said last week the policy-setting legislation will “drive efficiency and transparency within the Department of Defense by mandating fiscal responsibility, accountability, and transparency.”
“We will take steps to incentivize competition at the Department of Defense and within the military services to give the American taxpayers the best return on their investments,” he said.
The HASC also is opening up the bill-writing process this year. Before the subcommittees begin marking up their portions of the bill, staff will unveil information on the legislation to the public.
They will release the bill language, section-by-section analysis, directive report language, and funding tables a day or more before the subcommittee and full committee markup sessions. The HASC will release this data for all but one of its subcommittees at varied times tomorrow, with the Readiness subpanel information coming Wednesday morning.
The subcommittee markups will be held Wednesday and Thursday. For the key subcommittees overseeing weapon systems, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Strategic Forces, and Tactical Air and Land will mark up on Wednesday, and Seapower and Projection Forces will follow on Thursday.
The full HASC is scheduled to hold its day-plus-long markup on May 11. It plans to release the bill language, section-by-section analysis, directive report language, and funding tables for the full committee’s combined legislation on May 9.
Previously, the HASC released a detailed summary of the bill after it was marked up by the full committee, and further details were not immediately available.
The Senate Armed Services Committee will mark up its own version of the FY ’12 defense authorization bill later this year. The budget-setting defense appropriations bill will be crafted by the House and Senate appropriations committees.