CSBA in the News

Next Monday the President is scheduled to submit his fiscal year 2016 budget request to Congress, an annual process that marks the official beginning of the budget season.  While we don’t have the details of what will be included in this year’s defense budget yet, the broad outlines are well known.  The Defense Department’s base budget for FY 2016 is expected to total $534 billion (not including war funding), which is a six percent real increase from the level appropriated in FY 2015.  The administration is also expected to request an additional $51 billion in war funding, for a total of some $585 billion in DoD funding.

On January 27, 2015, Ambassador Eric Edelman, Distinguished Fellow at CSBA, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the implications of the Obama Administration’s approach to the Iran nuclear negotiations. In his testimony, Ambassador Edelman expressed concern over the pattern of concessions and negotiating dynamic and the resulting prospect of negotiations moving far beyond the parameters of an acceptable final agreement. He called on the American policymakers to use all available instruments of coercive diplomacy to restore credibility to the oft-repeated statement that every option remains on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran.