The Army’s top general said more troops will unnecessarily die on the battlefield if Congress decides to pass another stop-gap budget measure this month.
Gen. Mark Milley, who testified along with the three other service chiefs before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, said the lack of a standard budget for fiscal 2017 would grind most Army training to a halt in July and dramatically increase pressure on the service after years of budget caps and funding uncertainty.
The top officers of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps echoed the dire warning to the committee as time is winding down for lawmakers to pass legislation to fund the military and federal government after the current continuing resolution budget measure expires on April 28.
“It will increase risk to the nation and it will ultimately result in dead Americans on the future battlefield,” Milley told committee members.
Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, called a rare round of testimony from the service chiefs to ring the alarm over the possibility of another continuing resolution — potentially the third in a row since last fall — that would lock in last year’s funding levels and preclude the military from starting any new programs.
“To get on a better track we all have to be clear and candid with the American people,” Thornberry said.
Air Force Gen. David Goldfein said a stop-gap budget measure would be equivalent to the round of sequestration in 2013 that cut funding across the board.
Congress has so far avoided additional sequester cuts through various budget deals because many lawmakers and the military consider it a worst-case scenario.
“You see in the Air Force we still haven’t recovered from round one” of budget caps, Goldfein said. “We’ll stop flying in late June when the money runs out.”
The Marine Corps would also stop flight operations in July or August and much of its training, Gen. Robert Neller said.
But a budget deal this month remains uncertain and will require a big coming-together between Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the committee’s top Democrat, said a continuing resolution would hamstring the military and result in a “colossal waste of time,” requiring the Defense Department to figure out how it can spend its money without a new budget bill.
But a defense budget cannot be considered or passed in a vacuum, and Congress must also strike a deal on funding domestic programs such as the Department of Homeland Security, Smith said.
Democrats were rankled by the Trump administration’s plans to boost defense spending in fiscal 2018 by cutting $54 billion from elsewhere in the budget, including a nearly 30 percent reduction to the State Department.
“It is all of a piece,” Smith said.
