Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter should prepare for the reality that Congress will not remove spending caps this year, House appropriators warned Wednesday.
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Peter Visclosky of Indiana, told Carter that while he is sure lawmakers will try to find some spending relief for the Pentagon, he did not anticipate “a significant change” from current sentiment on Capitol Hill that the budget levels will be set at sequestration levels, “as there appears to be insurmountable obstacles blocking every path forward.”
One of the challenges is that while the Defense Department has repeatedly argued that it will not be able to properly defend the country under the spending caps, the entire array of discretionary federal programs — education, infrastructure and transportation — also are facing cuts, which reduces the likelihood that defense will get such a large pass when other spending priorities won’t.
At Wednesday’s hearing, members alternately lamented the crisis in the Pentagon’s ability to meet global threats and cautioned the department to be ready for the cuts.
“I would beg you to be the person that says, tear up that president’s budget, because it assumes there’s no sequestration,” Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, told both Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey at a Wednesday hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.
Despite a wide consensus that the U.S. faces a complex and dangerous security environment, “we’re designing a budget that follows the law,”Granger said. “I can’t believe that we’re gonna do this when the world is so dangerous.”
Carter and Dempsey testified before the appropriators to again press the case that the Defense Department will not be able to meet the global, complex threats it faces if Congress does not pass funding above the sequestration limit of $499 billion. The president’s fiscal 2016 request was $534 billion — adding tens of billions of dollars for additional ships, aircraft and modernization efforts that have been delayed as the Pentagon prioritized funding the ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The House Budget Committee is expected to release its mark for this year’s spending the week of March 16.
Over the last week, the appropriations subcommittee has warned each of the armed services that it does not think that the House Budget Committee will pass a spending plan above the sequester limits, and has directed each service to prepare lists of potential cuts.
Four members of the full appropriations committee, Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., Tom Cole, R-Okla., Steve Womack, R-Ark., and Barbara Lee, D-Calif., serve on both the budget and appropriations committees.
On Wednesday, the defense appropriations subcommittee chairman, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., repeated his warning to Carter and Dempsey that he has given each service so far:
“Mr. Secretary and General Dempsey, I completely agree that [sequestration] needs to be modified to avoid dramatic consequences and long-term negative impacts on our military capability. But unless and until the law is changed, this committee has no choice but to draft our bill to comply with the [sequestration] caps.”
