The chiefs of the armed services Wednesday issued their latest dire warnings about how automatic Pentagon budget cuts would leave them unable to properly defend the nation from a growing array of threats.
“Our soldiers will bear the burden of our decisions with their lives,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“We are now the smallest Air Force we’ve ever been,” added Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welch. “We simply do not have a bench to go to.”
The effects of sequestration cuts mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act on military readiness had previously been well-documented, but the political will to repeal them has eluded both Congress and the Obama administration, even though just about every politician in Washington says that’s what should be done.
The law called for a $487 billion reduction in planned spending over 10 years, or the $50 billion a year in sequestration cuts that are set to run through 2023. A two-year budget deal reached at the end of 2013 gave partial relief of that requirement, but it’s set to return in the fiscal 2016 budget cycle.
The result has been a growing gap between what the military is being asked to do and what the Pentagon’s budget will pay for that’s quickly growing to the point where U.S. forces won’t be able to do what’s needed to defend the nation.
“While we can meet the requirements of the defense strategic guidance today, there is no margin,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford said.
President Obama wants to repeal that requirement. Congressional leaders of both parties want to repeal it. But the cuts were imposed because Democrats and Republicans could not find some other formula to meet the pressure to reduce federal spending, and since then neither party has come up with an alternative approach that can pass Congress and get the president’s signature.
The frustration was evident at Wednesday’s hearing, where Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., decried the fact that Pentagon spending, rather than being driven by strategy, had become the “collateral damage of political gridlock.
“America’s national defense can no longer be held hostage to domestic political disputes,” he said.
