By Emelie Rutherford
A Defense Department spokesman acknowledged yesterday that the next defense budget will not be as large as a proposal crafted last year at the Pentagon, and suggested war funding may not be shifted into the base budget next fiscal year to the extent lawmakers want.
The Obama White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in a passback memo has called for the Pentagon’s discretionary budget for fiscal year 2010 to be $524 billion, according a source and multiple media reports. This is the same FY ’10 defense budget ceiling the Bush administration projected early last year, but is less than a $580 billion- plus proposal the Joint Chiefs of Staff crafted late last year.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters yesterday that “there was an internal exercise done on budgeting matters,” conducted “months ago,” and that “the reality is the economic situation has deteriorated dramatically since we undertook that exercise.”
“We today can probably not be as ambitious as we were in that exercise in moving funding from supplementals into the base budget,” Morrell said at the Pentagon.
That “internal exercise” he said, reflected two ideas: dedicating 4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product to defense spending and “trying to be responsive to the desires of the Congress that more and more supplemental spending be moved into the base budget.”
Regarding supplemental war spending, he said: “I’m speaking of things like Wounded Warrior, the JIEDDO program, you know, Army and Marine Corps growth, as well as some operational spending to reflect sort of the persistent-presence reality that we find ourselves in.”
Asked if all war funding will remain in the supplemental, Morrell said, “These are things to be discussed.” The Pentagon, he said, is in the midst of talks with OMB on the FY ’10 budget topline number.
Lawmakers have pushed for the Pentagon to fold war spending, now covered in supplemental appropriations bills, into its base budget request. While several lawmakers yesterday said they were not aware of the details of the back-and-forth between OMB and the Pentagon, they signaled any delay in migrating much or all war-related funding into the FY ’10 base budget would face resistance on Capitol Hill.
“We’ve tried to insist in law that there not be separate budgets for war funding, that they not be handled by supplementals, and we just have to hope that the new president will abide by what the law is, and also by his own words, which is that he really wants to have one budget,” Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told reporters at the Capitol. “So we will hope and expect that there will be one budget (for FY ’10), and they’re not going to separate war funding out in order to hide the impact of the war funding.”
SASC member Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said yesterday using emergency supplemental appropriations bill for war funding in recent years is a “gimmick” that must end.
“I think they need to present a unified budget…and once they do I think it’ll be up to us to do our best to make sure that it’s at an appropriate level,” she told reporters.
Morrell, at the Pentagon, said the Defense Department “is well aware of the fact that times are tough, and we are prepared to do the belt-tightening that is required and responsible of us.”
He said the Pentagon is in the “early stages” of talks with OMB, which he described as “constructive.”
“We anticipate…that we’ll ultimately arrive at a (topline) number that will be both healthy, responsible, and, at the same time, credible,” Morrell said.
The Pentagon is expected to send a detailed budget proposal to Congress in the next two months or so.
Morell noted Defense Secretary Robert Gates “recognizes we are going to be facing a constrained budget,” and is “perfectly prepared to make hard choices.”
Gates is committed to ensuring all defense programs are reviewed, and a small group in the Pentagon is working on the budget now, the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, it was not clear yesterday if any senators will attempt to add Pentagon weapon systems spending to the $888 billion economic-stimulus bill now before the Senate.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) previously talked about trying to add such funding to the legislation, but yesterday during a break in debate at the Capitol said he wasn’t sure if he’d be offering any such amendments.
Asked if defense program spending will or should be added to the stimulus bill, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) said: “I hope not.”
Inouye, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) and one of the bill’s managers, noted that the FY ’09 defense budget has already been passed.
SAC Ranking Member Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), another bill manager, said yesterday he was opposed to the economic-recovery bill. He did not have a definitive stance on whether Pentagon weapon spending should be added.