The White House is preparing to submit top line budget proposals to Congress in mid-March with more detailed documentation to follow later that month, Defense News has learned.
The Pentagon is preparing to send its fiscal 2014 budget — a spending plan that does not take into account massive cuts scheduled to kick in at the beginning of March and whose timeframe has been murky until now — to Congress on March 25, according to a Feb. 5 memo signed by Pentagon Deputy Comptroller John Roth/.../
While sequestration would pose significant problems across the military for the six months remaining in fiscal 2013, it might be slightly less complicated to deal with in fiscal 2014, which starts Oct. 1.
Todd Harrison, a senior defense budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the Pentagon would receive some amount of relief with its 2014 budget plan.
That’s because defense budget officials would retain control over how the second year of the sequester cuts would be implemented. But that does not mean they would be totally out of the budgetary woods.
“The problem is, in the 2014 request, the Pentagon is about $50 billion above the cap because they’re not taking into account the sequester,” Harrison said, referring to a spending ceiling set by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
“When are they going to re-plan that?” Harrison asked. “I mean, just look how long it has taken them” to move toward closing a 2014 budget request, he added. “And that was to implement a smaller cut.”
Harrison questioned whether the DoD would, should the sequester cut kick in March 1, rip up its 2014 plan and factor in sequestration.
“There may not be the time nor the political willingness to do that,” Harrison said. “And if the Pentagon exceeds that cap, there would be another sequester in ‘14 to get under the cap — another across-the-board salami slice.”