By Emelie Rutherford
A Senate budget-writing panel agreed yesterday to cut President Barack Obama’s proposed level of Pentagon funding, and a House committee could do the same thing next week.
The Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) voted 17-12 yesterday to reduce the funding allocated to its Defense Subcommittee by $8.1 billion below what the White House requested for fiscal year 2011, dropping the amount to $522.8 billion.
The Obama administration in February requested from Congress $530.9 billion for the Pentagon base budget in the fiscal year that will begin Oct. 1.
“It does not need to be said that the nation is at war and faces threats to our security globally; we cannot afford to let down our guard,” SAC Chairman Daniel Inouye (D- Hawaii) said yesterday during the SAC markup session. “Nonetheless, I believe we can achieve savings in our Defense Department, which will allow us to curtail the defense spending modestly.”
Overall, the SAC called for reducing the administration’s overall FY ’11 federal budget request by $14 billion. It set the so-called 302(b) allocations determining funding levels for the 12 subcommittees.
“My colleagues believe we should freeze funding for defense; I, for one, do not,” Inouye said, citing the need to cut the federal budget deficit.
Inouye said the SAC subcommittees, including the defense panel he chairs, are set to finish marking up their FY ’11 appropriations bills over the “next few weeks.”
In the House, the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) is expected to mark up its version of the FY ’11 defense appropriations bill next Thursday, in a closed bill-writing session. The full House Appropriations Committee (HAC) is expected to meet before then, to set the 302(b) allocations, and potentially call for reducing Obama’s overall FY ’11 budget by $7 billion.
HAC-D Chairman Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) has said the HAC could cut Obama’s Pentagon budget proposal by up to 2 percent (Defense Daily, June 16).
“With the austerity that colors the rest of our appropriations work this year, and with a serious commitment to reduce the deficit, I cannot believe defense will be held harmless,” Dicks said last month. “In the allocation our subcommittee receives, we could see a substantial reduction from the president’s budget request, which obviously complicates our task but which is nevertheless a necessary exercise.”