Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Bloomberg.com
October 2, 2008
By Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News
The U.S. military wants an increase of $57 billion in fiscal 2010, about 13.5 percent more than this year's budget of $514.3 billion, according to the Pentagon's outgoing comptroller.
The White House hasn't approved the request and Pentagon officials will make a strong case for it, Tina Jonas said.
Some of the increase reflects a determination to include in the base budget some costs that have been funded through emergency legislation, Jonas said in an interview.
The expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been funded this way, even as many lawmakers, including Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, complained these requests include other spending, mask the military's true cost and complicate their budgeting process.
Jonas said Defense Secretary Robert Gates decided this new course was necessary to maintain a ready force for the next administration, and the request would include personnel and equipment costs that shouldn't depend on emergency funding.
``It's up to the senior leaders of this department to articulate to the next team why they think this is the right'' course of action, she said. The new president will take office on Jan. 20 and submit the fiscal 2010 budget request to Congress in February.
The Army ``has been operating in a completely different way than 2000'' in terms of the manpower deployed and wear on equipment, Jonas said.
The Army's budget for fiscal 2010-2015 would increase funding for operations and maintenance by $2 billion from $41.7 billion, according to budget documents prepared in August.
Shift in Plans
Defense spending, adjusted for inflation and not counting the cost of the wars, has increased about 43 percent since fiscal 2000. The proposed 2010 increase reverses a plan released in February that projected base budgets to be flat or slightly down.
``There is an effort under way to see if we can move away from'' supplemental spending measures and rely ``increasingly on base budgets to fund these conflicts,'' Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.
``We are going to be involved in persistent conflict for some time to come; that's the reality of the world we live in and we need to budget for that,'' he said during a press conference Sept. 24.
The basic defense budget Congress approved for fiscal 2009, which started yesterday, is about $514.3 billion. The Pentagon in February projected $526.7 billion for fiscal 2010.
Analyst's View
When adjusted for inflation, the change to $583.7 billion would be an increase of 10 and 11 percent, said Steven Kosiak, a defense budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
There was a comparable increase in the fiscal 2003 defense budget, but ``this would be much larger than the typical increases we have seen over the past eight years, which have averaged about 4 percent'' when adjusted for inflation, he said.
``Just how big a boost this would be also depends on what happens'' with emergency wartime supplemental budgets, Kosiak said.
The senior foreign policy adviser for Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama, Richard Danzig, said Obama believes emergency wartime funding measures are ``an unfortunate mode of budgeting.
``Because they occur with less discipline than the ordinary budget process, one would want to get away from them as much as possible,'' Danzig told reporters today in Washington. ``They are warranted when you need urgent, unexpected requests but they have become mechanisms for making predictable requests,'' he said.
October 2, 2008
By Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News
The U.S. military wants an increase of $57 billion in fiscal 2010, about 13.5 percent more than this year's budget of $514.3 billion, according to the Pentagon's outgoing comptroller.
The White House hasn't approved the request and Pentagon officials will make a strong case for it, Tina Jonas said.
Some of the increase reflects a determination to include in the base budget some costs that have been funded through emergency legislation, Jonas said in an interview.
The expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been funded this way, even as many lawmakers, including Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, complained these requests include other spending, mask the military's true cost and complicate their budgeting process.
Jonas said Defense Secretary Robert Gates decided this new course was necessary to maintain a ready force for the next administration, and the request would include personnel and equipment costs that shouldn't depend on emergency funding.
``It's up to the senior leaders of this department to articulate to the next team why they think this is the right'' course of action, she said. The new president will take office on Jan. 20 and submit the fiscal 2010 budget request to Congress in February.
The Army ``has been operating in a completely different way than 2000'' in terms of the manpower deployed and wear on equipment, Jonas said.
The Army's budget for fiscal 2010-2015 would increase funding for operations and maintenance by $2 billion from $41.7 billion, according to budget documents prepared in August.
Shift in Plans
Defense spending, adjusted for inflation and not counting the cost of the wars, has increased about 43 percent since fiscal 2000. The proposed 2010 increase reverses a plan released in February that projected base budgets to be flat or slightly down.
``There is an effort under way to see if we can move away from'' supplemental spending measures and rely ``increasingly on base budgets to fund these conflicts,'' Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.
``We are going to be involved in persistent conflict for some time to come; that's the reality of the world we live in and we need to budget for that,'' he said during a press conference Sept. 24.
The basic defense budget Congress approved for fiscal 2009, which started yesterday, is about $514.3 billion. The Pentagon in February projected $526.7 billion for fiscal 2010.
Analyst's View
When adjusted for inflation, the change to $583.7 billion would be an increase of 10 and 11 percent, said Steven Kosiak, a defense budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
There was a comparable increase in the fiscal 2003 defense budget, but ``this would be much larger than the typical increases we have seen over the past eight years, which have averaged about 4 percent'' when adjusted for inflation, he said.
``Just how big a boost this would be also depends on what happens'' with emergency wartime supplemental budgets, Kosiak said.
The senior foreign policy adviser for Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama, Richard Danzig, said Obama believes emergency wartime funding measures are ``an unfortunate mode of budgeting.
``Because they occur with less discipline than the ordinary budget process, one would want to get away from them as much as possible,'' Danzig told reporters today in Washington. ``They are warranted when you need urgent, unexpected requests but they have become mechanisms for making predictable requests,'' he said.
