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Budget May Drop Below Caps
Despite the concerns about the budget law's caps, defense spending could go lower still. That's the message of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment's Todd Harrison in a new report, "Chaos and Uncertainty: The FY 2014 Defense Budget and Beyond." Harrison writes that the budget caps may be "more of a ceiling than a floor in the coming years." He sketches what he calls a worst-case but still plausible scenario of the currently unfolding drawdown going deeper than the law now stipulates but just as deep as past U.S. postwar drawdowns have gone, particularly in certain key areas such as personnel and procurement. The details are in the document, but the upshot is this: defense spending could decline more than the 34 percent (compared to the fiscal 2010 baseline) that the budget control law lays out; instead, it could drop as much as 51 percent in real terms. The administration's best choice, Harrison argues, is to accept the prospect that lower--maybe much lower--budgets may be coming and to plan accordingly. The alternative, he says, is to let the reductions arise in an ad hoc way (See "Quote of the Day" below). But the Pentagon and defense advocates in Congress have instead chosen to push for the most they can get and have found themselves adjusting on the fly--not strategically--to the reined-in fiscal reality. Not only are budget requests and spending and authorizing bills not reflecting the likely downturn in spending (even to the budget control act level) but also there is not even official planning for the leaner budget scenarios. Harrison points out that the Pentagon's worst-case of three possible budget assumptions in this year's Strategic Choices and Management Review was, in fact, the current budget caps/.../
In the News
Defense Procurements Could Fall to $62B Per Year
A Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments analyst predicts that defense budget may drop as much as $415 billion if sequestration remains in place over the next decade, Aviation Week reported Friday.
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It’s Time to Get Budget Smart
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is releasing a new report on the chaotic budget picture for fiscal 2014 today. Normally, Todd Harrison, one of the best defense budget experts in town, does an annual analysis of the Pentagon's budget request, but this year that made no sense, he told Morning Defense. That's because the continuing resolution and sequestration have rendered that document meaningless, which is to say, there's no way the Pentagon is getting that much money this year.
In the News
Each U.S. Troop In Afghanistan Now Costs $2.1 Million
The average cost of each U.S. troop in Afghanistan will nearly double in the last year of the war to $2.1 million, according to a new analysis of the Pentagon’s budget.
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Chaotic Time for the Defense Budget
The current budget battle on Capitol Hill is more about taxes, entitlements and Medicare than defense spending, said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
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Report Says Sequester May Be New Funding Ceiling for Pentagon Budget
Sequestration may not be the worst-case scenario for Pentagon budgets — defense spending could drop even lower in the next decade, a new report argues.