Top military leaders may have to answer for other leaders’ dire testimony about the defense budget when they appear before the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday morning.
Last week, service secretaries told lawmakers that the military’s readiness is just scraping by and acknowledged that they’ve had to cut valuable capabilities to stay under a tight budget cap.
“We’re mortgaging our future readiness because we have to ensure success in today’s battles against emerging threats,” Acting Army Secretary Patrick Murphy said.
But days later, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford painted a much brighter picture to the Senate Armed Services Committee of a military that is slowly rebuilding.
“We’re prioritizing training and readiness of our ground forces as has been noted and reinvigorating the readiness and modernization of our fighter aircraft fleet,” Carter said in testimony of operations in Europe.
Some House lawmakers could push Carter on Tuesday on which is actually the reality facing the military.
“Last week the HASC heard pretty dire testimony from the service leaders, but the SecDef’s testimony at SASC was much rosier,” Justin Johnson, a defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation, said via email. “It will be interesting to see if HASC members bring up some of the bleak or disturbing statements from the chiefs from last week with the SecDef tomorrow.”
Analysts said they also expect news of the day to drive the hearing, including the U.S. strategy against the Islamic State after a Marine was killed by an Islamic State rocket at a U.S. base in Iraq over the weekend.
Johnson also said he expects lawmakers to focus on the number of troops that remain in Afghanistan after this year, a number top military leaders in the Middle East have said needs review.
