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.
Still, under restrictions from the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) and sequestration, which went into effect March 1, the Pentagon could be looking at more than a trillion dollars of cuts over the next decade, including around $50 billion in fiscal 2014.
“This is a very chaotic time for the defense budget,” Harrison said Oct. 24, during the release of his new report, “Chaos and Uncertainty: The FY2014 Defense Budget and Beyond.”
The Department of Defense (DoD) fiscal 2014 budget request – including funds for the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) – was $612.5 billion. The fiscal year started Oct. 1, but Congress once again did not sign a year-long budget. Instead, it approved a short-term funding bill, a continuing resolution, that will run through Jan. 15. By that time, Congress will have to decide whether to sign another CR or pass a budget for the remainder of the year.
The fiscal budget also proposes a round of Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC) that would be slated to begin in fiscal 2015. Last year, the department had a round of BRAC in its budget request, but it was removed by Congress. The last BRAC began in 2005 and cost more than initially expected. Harrison said this left a sour taste in lawmakers’ mouths, and the closures were not popular to begin with in their districts.
Because of budget caps in the BCA, the DoD needs immediate savings. However, closing bases provides long-term savings, but not short term, Harrison said
“The prospects for a BRAC right now do not look good,” he said.
Throughout fiscal 2014, troops will be leaving Afghanistan, eventually cutting the number from the current force of 68,000 to around 34,000. Despite this decrease, the DoD budget shows an increase in cost from $1.3 million per service member deployed to Afghanistan to $2.1 million in fiscal 2014.
Harrison hypothesized that this increase – which funds come from the OCO – is a result of the DoD trying to put more into the OCO because it’s not impacted by spending cuts from sequestration and the BCA.
As the U.S. continues to draw down from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Harrison said historical trends show troop levels could be slashed from the current level of 1.5 million active-duty service members to around 1 million. The overall department budget also could shrink to a base budget of $415 billion, if trends continue, and industry, such as shipyards, would suffer because there would not be as many assets being built.