England: Pentagon Eyes 'Range of Possibilities' For Boosting FY-10 Budget

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
InsideDefense.com
September 15, 2008

The Bush administration in early November will decide among "a range of possibilities" for how defense spending might be increased, which could leave the new president with a 2010 budget request bolstered by tens of billions of dollars and a six-year plan boosted by approximately $300 billion.
Among the options being considered is a fiscal year 2010 budget increase of $57 billion, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told InsideDefense.com last week -- a boost that would be part of a wider effort to significantly recalibrate the size of the annual U.S. military budget, according to Pentagon officials familiar with ongoing budget deliberations
“We have considered a range of possibilities, and that’s certainly one of them,” England said of the $57 billion boost, first reported by InsideDefense.com. “But we won’t have that budget together until November.” England’s comments, delivered following an address to the Navy League of New York City on Sept. 12, mark the first public acknowledgement by a Pentagon official that a major increase in defense spending could be in the offing.
The increase could herald a White House move to reverse the current five-year budget plan for the Pentagon, which assumes the base budget -- adjusted for inflation -- will decline in FY-10 and continue to shrink through FY-13. It might also mollify the concerns of senior Pentagon officials --including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has expressed unease over the projected “negative growth” in defense spending.
“We will recommend a budget to the next team,” England said last week. “We will flesh out a complete budget as if we were going to turn one in. I feel that is important to help the team after us, so they don’t have to start from scratch.”
He said the outgoing OSD leadership will provide the transition team for the next administration a full budget proposal with all of the voluminous supporting documentation completed, including the detailed justification books required by lawmakers.
“Some people view that as too aggressive on our part,” England said of the Pentagon’s budget plans. “My view is that it is a responsible thing to do. The transition will be very difficult. People can change anything they want.”
England said the push to conclude the FY-10 budget process by Election Day is not designed to lock in the priorities of the outgoing administration. Rather, he said, the goal is good governance, an effort to reduce as much churn as possible within a bureaucracy managing two wars.
Whatever the total size of the FY-10 budget the Bush administration proposes to the next administration, it will be just that: A proposal, he said.
“It’s up to them” -- the incoming administration -- “to decide whether to turn it in,” England said.
An analysis of the administration’s FY-09 defense budget issued by the House Budget Committee earlier this year concluded the Pentagon’s budget authority, excluding war costs, was projected to fall from $528 billion in FY-09 to $523 billion in FY-10, after which it is projected to continue to slide to $516 billion in FY-11, $512 billion in FY-12 and $509 billion in FY-13.
Since January, the Pentagon has wrestled with ways to integrate war costs, which today are funded through supplemental appropriations, into the base budget. The Pentagon requested a total of $669 billion in FY-08: $190 billion for war costs and $480 billion in the base budget. Pentagon budget drills held in early spring consolidated base budget and war spending requests into a single figure for FY-10, but they generated a sum that was deemed to large to sell politically, according to Pentagon officials.
By early summer, senior Pentagon officials began identifying general areas that might be candidates for increased allocations in FY-10 and across the FY-10 to FY-15 investment plan. By late August, the Office of the Secretary of Defense had clear ideas of how it would allocate up to $57 billion (DefenseAlert, Sept. 11).
The $57 billion would be used to pad modernization accounts, shift select war costs to the base budget and prepare the military for protracted counterterrorism operations around the world. The Army, according to a Pentagon briefing slide breaking out the proposed allocations, would receive $17.1 billion, or 30 percent; the Navy and Marine Corps $13.7 billion, or 24 percent; the Air Force $9.8 billion, or 17.2 percent, SOCOM $1.6 billion, or 2.8 percent; and defense-wide accounts $12.7 billion, or 22.2 percent.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense would hold back $2.1 billion, or 3.7 percent, to make last-minute allocations for unforeseen needs, the Pentagon briefing slide said.
--Jason Sherman
 
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