The Pentagon's 'Lost Year;' Time To Clear The Rubble

http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/10/the-pentagons-lost-year-time-to-clear-the-rubble/



The Pentagon's 'Lost Year;' Time To Clear The Rubble
By David Berteau
Published: April 10, 2013


2013 is a lost year for the defense budget. Political paralysis from the election, the fiscal cliff, sequestration and the debt ceiling doomed 2013 from the beginning. The FY2014 budget request is already under duress and is unlikely to fare better.

Despite the two month delay in its release, the new budget request fails to recognize the 2013 appropriations just passed and it exceeds the budget caps in the Budget Control Act. With an erroneous baseline and disregard for the BCA caps, the president's request not only endangers the 2014 spending levels, but sets DoD on a path to plan for higher budgets over the entire Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), compromising the planning process.

Some hope might be found in the fact that both the House and Senate passed budget resolutions for the first time since 2009 (albeit under threat of having their pay withheld if they failed). But like the president's request, both budget resolutions exceed the statutory budget caps and once again the government has put itself in the position of needing to resolve much larger issues in order to get defense authorization and appropriations for next year.

Congress needs to change the caps and then appropriate at one of the existing budget levels (House Budget Resolution, Senate Budget Resolution, or the president's budget request) or they need to adopt a concurrent budget resolution at the cap level. If they cannot do one of these two things, there will be another CR, another sequester, and the vicious cycle will continue.