Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, wrote an op-ed earlier this week for The Hill newspaper, saying the Pentagon’s rhetoric does not match what in it’s five-year spending plan.http://goo.gl/r4U8q0
Yesterday, Pentagon Comptroller responded, saying there’s no confusion about the Pentagon’s spending priorities.
“In our future years defense program, we made the decision to allow the services to plan at sequester levels for certain forces, even though our overall budget request exceeds sequester levels,” he wrote, also in the Hill. “We made this decision because of the time required to plan effectively for significant changes in some end strengths and carrier levels. We must begin that planning now to be ready to confront the reality of sequestration, which remains the law of the land for 2016 and beyond.” http://goo.gl/N2iBhI
— HARRISON APPLAUDS HALE FOR ACKNOWLEDGING THE BUDGET’S INCONSISTENCIES: “In his response to my op-ed, Mr. Hale confirmed the essential point I was making,” Harrison told Morning Defense. “DoD submitted a five-year budget plan that is not consistent with its stated goals for force levels. The confusion arose because senior Pentagon leaders, with the exception of Mr. Hale, did not acknowledge or explain these inconsistencies in their descriptions of the budget.”
— BUT SAYS THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN DOES MATTER: “Mr. Hale is correct that Congress only appropriates one year at a time, and these force level decisions do not have to be made in FY15,” Harrison said. “But it is wrong to suggest that only the first year of the budget matters. The five-year plan DoD submits to Congress each year is important because it signals to Congress and the American people the direction the Department intends to take.
“If DoD believes higher force levels are the right direction, it should identify the roughly $20 billion of offsets that would be required to fund these force levels in its five-year budget. Would it cut destroyers and subs to pay for the carrier? Would it cut helicopters and fighters to pay for the end strength? Hard times require hard truths.”