House Speaker John Boehner

Late last night (about 11:40pm) House Republicans introduced a $915 billion spending bill in a power play that would keep the government in operation beyond the weekend.  The maneuver comes as a response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's attempt, in conjunction with the White House, to put off movement on nine unfinished 2012 appropriations bills until Congress has agreed upon a separate package to extend a payroll tax break and jobless benefits.  

Senate leaders fear, with good reason, that the House will simply pass its version of key measures and adjourn for the year, leaving the Senate a take-it-or-leave it choice.

The White House has asked Congress to pass a stop-gap spending bill to provide more time to work out a compromise on some controversial provisions included in the spending package, but Republicans have not indicated they would advance such a bill.

Despite some controversial provisions, however, including those on travel to Cuba, the measure is understood to be relatively close to the expected conference agreement.

"We've got an agreement between appropriators in the House and the Senate - Democrats and Republicans - on a bipartisan bill to fund our government. We believe that the responsible thing to do is to move this," said House Speaker John Boehner.

The defense bill advanced by House Republicans would provide $518.1 billion for the Pentagon base budget, an increase of $5.1 billion over fiscal year 2011 (fy11) and a reduction of $20.8 billion below the President’s request.  Senate Appropriations Committee-approved language would provide $513 billion, a number achieved largely through the shifting of funds from the base account to the war account.

In addition, the bill would provide $115.1 billion for ongoing war operations largely in Afghanistan, $2.8 billion below the President’s request and $43 billion below fy11 appropriations.  The Senate Appropriations Committee would fund the wars at $117.5 billion.

A final agreement is expected in the coming days.

Read more

Security Matters, FY12, Defense Spending (all tags)

Go on over to the Center's site now for an updated war spending table. Here's the summary:

By the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that total US spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will surpass $1.4 trillion. This total includes approximately $823 billion for operations in Iraq and $557 billion for operations in Afghanistan.

Funding for the war in Iraq has decreased significantly as troops are withdrawn, leading to a notably smaller total spending request for FY2012. Funding for the war in Afghanistan will begin to decrease slightly in FY2012, signaling a possible downward trend.

Annual war spending peaked in FY2008 at $185.7 billion.

Read more

Iraq & Afghanistan, Security Matters, Defense Spending, FY12 (all tags)

For Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, which begins on October 1, 2011, the Obama Administration has requested a base budget of $553 billion for the Department of Defense (DOD). This is $13 billion below the Pentagon’s Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) estimate, released last year, but represents about 3 percent in real growth over the funding the department would receive for FY 2011 under the current continuing resolution, which expires on March 4.

In addition, the Administration has requested $117.6 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a 26 percent decrease from last year’s request of $159.4 billion and represents the administration’s commitment to reduce troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan and place more strict rules on what can and cannot be included in the war spending request. In the past, additional funding has been made available through emergency supplemental appropriations, when needed. This remains a possibility for FY 2012. This brings the FY 2012 defense budget request to a total of $670.6 billion.

These numbers do not include nuclear weapons related spending in the Department of Energy (DoE) or other defense related funding.

In addition to an initial $670 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Administration has requested $18 billion for nuclear weapons activities at Department of Energy and $7 billion for additional non-Pentagon defense related activities. This brings total non-Pentagon defense related spending (053/054) to $25 billion, an increase of about $200 million over FY 2011.

Click here for the full analysis of the FY 2012 request.

Read more

Security Matters, Defense Spending, FY12 (all tags)

As expected, President Obama’s address last night focused heavily on the deficit.  Most points we saw coming:

So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. (Applause.) Now, this would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was President.

This freeze will require painful cuts. Already, we've frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I've proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs. The Secretary of Defense has also agreed to cut tens of billions of dollars in spending that he and his generals believe our military can do without. (Applause.)

(For a translation of that last part, on Defense, see Josh Rogin’s post at The Cable or mine yesterday.)

More importantly, though, in terms of the budget, the President’s speech contained lines like this:

Now, most of the cuts and savings I've proposed only address annual domestic spending, which represents a little more than 12 percent of our budget. To make further progress, we have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending alone will be enough. It won't. (Applause.)

The bipartisan fiscal commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don't agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it –- in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes. (Applause.)

Today, the Congressional Budget Office raised its estimate of the budget deficit to $1.5 trillion for this year, on track to beat out the previous record of $1.4 trillion, set in 2009.

House majority leader Eric Cantor, House budget chairman Paul Ryan and others have echoed the president’s insistence that the entire budget be on the table.  It has yet to be seen what, if anything, will come of these statements.  No doubt, cuts are coming.  The question is where.

Read more

Security Matters, Defense Spending, fy11, fy12 (all tags)

By now, you’ve probably heard that the theme of tonight’s State of the Union will undoubtedly be the economy.  The President is expected to propose a five year freeze on non-security discretionary spending (déjà vu?) and a ban on earmarks, while Rep. Paul Ryan, who is no doubt practicing his best Reagan impression in front of the mirror as we speak, is gearing up to deliver the Republican response.

Meanwhile, House Republicans hoping to go into the evening with a little extra rhetorical firepower spent the day working to pass another bill because they said they would.  The measure, passed 256-165, would permit Rep. Ryan to reduce all non-security discretionary spending to fiscal 2008 levels or below, but it is another hortatory exercise that is not going anywhere.

Left or right, though, one thing is certain, most proposals have been carefully crafted to exclude “security spending”: Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs.

CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller reports via Twitter that the President will call for $78 billion in defense cuts over the next five years.  One would assume this means he will echo Secretary Gates’ recent announcement citing the same numbers.

The problem here is that the term “cut” is used very loosely in Gates’ plan for the defense budget.

Last year’s $100 billion efficiencies initiative was never meant to reduce the Pentagon’s budget, nor contribute to deficit reduction.  Rather, it was meant to reduce Pentagon waste and boost more important mission-critical projects, since the entire $100 billion would be reinvested in DoD.  More importantly, though, it was meant to stave off the harsh and inevitable reality that eventually, the Pentagon may have actually to reduce its budget.

Unfortunately for Gates, the Obama Administration was not satisfied.  When Jacob Lew took over as the new director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), he directed Gates to trim $150 billion more, and would not allow the Defense Department to keep the savings.

Gates eventually negotiated the $150 billion figure down to $78 billion, the same $78 billion President Obama is expected to discuss tonight, but as Gordon Adams points out in his remarks to The Cable, the math is a little fuzzy:

Read more

Security Matters, Defense Spending, fy11, fy12 (all tags)

A new New York Times/CBS News poll, based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 15-19 with over a thousand US adults, contains some interesting statistics on the priorities of the American public.  

It is clear from the numbers that the deficit is a major concern, and Americans would, not surprisingly, prefer the deficit be addressed through spending cuts, rather than higher taxes.  When asked what they would cut, however, that preference seems to disappear.  Nearly two-thirds of Americans chose higher payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security over reduced benefits in either program.  And when asked to choose among cuts to Medicare, Social Security or military spending – all programs that have grown exponentially over the past decade – 55 percent said cut the Pentagon.

By the way, the House is set to vote this week on a measure that would reduce all non-security spending to fiscal 2008 levels or below.  Clearly, Congress has been listening.

Read more

Security Matters, Defense Spending, fy11, fy12 (all tags)

For the fourth year in a row, the House Armed Services Committee has ignored Pentagon recommendations (including a veto threat from Sec. Gates) and approved the continued development of the F136 alternate engine, developed by General Electric and Rolls-Royce, for the F-35 fighter aircraft program.  

The measure would require the Pentagon to budget for the alternate engine starting in fiscal 2012 and withhold 25 percent of fiscal 2011 funds for F-35 development until the Pentagon's top arms buyer certified that all funds for the engine's development and procurement had been made available.

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett said during the markup today that “competition is warranted and critical and costs nothing more, according to the GAO.”

This isn’t quite true.  Money for the upfront costs of building and buying an alternate engine are not included in current DoD plans, so any increase is just that – an increase – and any actual savings brought about by competition will easily be eaten up.

"Study on top of study has shown that an extra fighter engine achieves marginal potential savings but heavy upfront costs -- nearly $3 billion worth," Gates said on May 8.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell reiterated later today that Gates would recommend a veto if Congress budgets any funds for the alternate engine:

Pursuing an extra engine is an unnecessary luxury we simply cannot afford, especially in our current fiscal condition… Any savings that might result from an engine competition are years away, purely hypothetical and likely modest at best.

Morrell went on to say that amount we will spend to complete an alternate engine for the F-35 “would prevent us from providing our warfighters with more urgently needed equipment.”

Read more

Security Matters, Congress, Defense Spending, F-35, FY12, FY11 (all tags)

By Lt. Gen. Robert Gard and Laicie Olson

Invoking the memory of President Eisenhower’s farewell address last weekend, Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a fiery speech aimed at overhauling the Pentagon’s budget and restructuring its bureaucracy.

This rhetoric is anything but new, and builds on previous initiatives set out by the Secretary.  

Just last Monday at a Navy League conference, Gates urged the Navy and Marine Corps to think more deeply about the challenges facing their costliest platforms – including aircraft carriers that run $11 billion each, future ballistic missile submarines costing $7 billion apiece and a Marine Corps amphibious assault vehicle “suited only to Eisenhower’s D-Day planning.”

While he later joked that he is “not crazy” and wouldn’t just cut out a carrier, the speech ruffled more than a few feathers.

Read more

Security Matters, Defense Spending, FY11, FY12, Gates, Congress, C-17, JSF, Extra Engine (all tags)