Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lamented on Monday the “great challenge” the Pentagon is facing trying to garner congressional approval of its proposed budget cuts.
His comments came during a press briefing at the Pentagon, as the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) prepares to take Congress’ first stab at the Pentagon’s proposed fiscal year 2013 budget. The hawkish panel is expected to call for adding billions in spending.
The Pentagon unveiled a $525 billion fiscal year 2013 defense budget proposal in February that is intended to jibe with the Budget Control Act of 2011 and its mandate to cut $259 billion in planned defense spending over the next five years and $487 billion over a decade.
Yet the House passed a budget resolution, which the HASC is using as a guideline, that calls for added funding. While different Pentagon budget figures are cited in Washington, House Republicans used Congressional Budget Office figures that show the resolution calling for $2.4 billion in defense funding above the limit in the Budget Control Act.
Panetta warned Congress Monday that tinkering with the Pentagon’s budget proposal “is a zero-sum game.” Because of the spending limits in the Budget Control Act, he said, a change in one area of the budget would require offsetting changes elsewhere.
He said if Congress blocks the major weapons program terminations the Pentagon proposed, “the result will be a need to find as much as $9.6 billion in savings from other areas over five years.”
“And that could mean less money to buy high-priority ships or acquire the next-generation aircraft,” he said.
The Pentagon’s FY ’13 plan calling for delaying some F-35 Joint Strike Fighter procurement, canceling Global Hawk Block 30 drones, delaying the new ballistic-missile submarine, retiring cargo aircraft, cutting Navy shipbuilding, and canceling plans to upgrade Humvees.
Panetta noted that since President Barack Obama released his budget on Feb. 13, congressional panels have held dozens of hearings with Pentagon leaders, during which the Pentagon’s new strategic guidance also has been scrutinized.
“A lot of tough questions were asked, but I believe that both our strategy and our budget proposals have held up very well under this very intense scrutiny,” the defense secretary said.
He said as the nation faces challenges “in this dangerous and uncertain world,” we “can’t afford to have the Congress resort to bitter partisanship or parochialism at this critical time.”
Panetta also indirectly addressed the buzz surrounding the controversial statement from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)–which Ryan later said was ill-phrased–that military generals were not being honest with Congress when they said they supported Obama’s budget.
“Military and civilian leaders here at the department all stand unified behind our strategy and our budget because, I think, we believe we’ve developed that strategy and the budget together as a team,” Panetta said Monday.
He reiterated his call for lawmakers to find a way to prevent so-called sequestration cuts to defense spending from starting next January. Those cuts would be on top of the already-planned-for $487 billion in reductions.
He said he remains “optimistic that we can hopefully find a way to avoid this disaster” of sequestration cuts. Still, he said again he expects if no congressional solution is in the works by the summer the Pentagon likely will have to start planning for the sequestration cuts.
“I would assume that (the White House’s Office of Management and Budget) OMB at that point would have to indicate to not just the Department of Defense, but to other agencies that we would have to begin to do some preliminary planning,” he said. “Even though I think all of us believe that ultimately, this will not happen, we still have to take that precaution.”