Posts Tagged ‘debt ceiling agreement’

The Navy will not be forced to ground four of its 10 air wings, as it had earlier warned, but instead it will drastically reduce flying hours. Flight hours are being slashed to the lowest level needed to maintain baseline safety standards and efficient aircraft maintenance, Rear Adm. Ted Branch said Monday. The cuts are expected to save the Navy $2 million per month per air wing, said Branch, who is responsible for six East Coast-based aircraft carriers and associated air wings …

Senior defense officials have urged Congress to reverse the deep spending cuts imposed by sequestration during budget and oversight hearings this spring, but neither lawmakers nor the Pentagon are hopeful they can be averted. During a Senate Armed Services hearing on Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) pointed out one reason why Republican defense hawks so far have failed to gain support from either party for legislation to undo the sequester. “I think one of the reasons that members of both parties are willing to allow this sequestration to proceed is a widespread belief that a profligate Department of Defense is unwilling to rein in runaway costs on underperforming programs …

The strategic review of defense priorities now under way at the Pentagon is not intended to recommend ways its budget can be trimmed to absorb $52 billion in sequester cuts next year, but almost certainly will influence decisions made by both lawmakers and the administration as to what spending categories will bear the most severe cuts. “The choices the president and secretary of defense make in response to the decision points identified in the review in the months thereafter will then inform our 2015 budget submission as well as how we execute our 2014 budget …

Sequestration is holding up 11 DOD Education Activity replacement and renovation projects in the fiscal 2013 budget, according to DODEA. Only one of the projects is in the United States, with the remaining ones spread across Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and South Korea. The U.S. project is at Fort Campbell, Ky.

The House plans to start taking up fiscal 2014 appropriations bills in June, with the defense spending measure possibly reaching the floor by the middle of the month. House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) is expected to get the process started shortly by allocating the $967 billion available for discretionary spending next year among the 12 spending bills, reported CQ. As long as the House and Senate fail to come to agreement over a FY 2014 budget resolution, though, the Democrat-controlled Senate will be crafting spending bills based on a pre-sequester figure of $1.058 trillion …

The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee have asked the Pentagon to detail how it would carry out the $52 billion in sequester cuts slated to be imposed next year. The fiscal 2014 budget delivered last month by DOD assumes that the automatic spending cuts will not go into effect. To date, however, there has been no progress on a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement required to avert sequestration …

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will make a decision shortly on the extent to which civilian workers will be forced to take unpaid days off, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told reporters Wednesday. “We’re in the middle of a $37 billion to $40 billion cut over a six-month period, and we need to look closely at that, but I expect him to make a decision soon …

If Congress and the White House fail to reach a deficit reduction deal that replaces automatic spending cuts starting in fiscal 2014, the Pentagon would consider crafting an alternate budget, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday. Last month, the Obama administration sent Congress a $526.6 billion base budget for next year that does not reflect the $52 billion reduction in defense spending triggered under sequestration in FY 2014 …

Sequestration has already made a dent in local economies throughout Arizona, where 43,000 workers are employed by the defense industry, according to government officials. Government and business leaders are most concerned about the impact on smaller companies, the second- and third-tier companies in the defense supply chain, reported Politico. One challenge for officials is that there is no warning when smaller suppliers are affected by production cutbacks at larger manufacturers …

House Appropriations Chair Harold Rogers [...]