Posts Tagged ‘defense budget’

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday directed senior leaders to reconsider the strategic guidance that the Pentagon developed last year to determine if it needs to be adjusted following the arrival of sequestration. President Obama unveiled the strategy in January 2012 that had been crafted to accommodate $487 billion in spending reductions over the following decade. But now that DOD faces the prospect of absorbing an additional $500 billion in cuts through fiscal 2021 …

The Senate will continue debate on Monday over amendments to a fiscal 2013 continuing resolution needed to avert a government shutdown after March 27. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) put off consideration of the measure after the two parties were unable to reach a deal over which amendments — out of nearly 100 — would get a floor vote …

Because the White House has not yet delivered its fiscal 2014 budget request, the Pentagon witnesses at Thursday’s hearing of the House Armed Services’ Readiness Subcommittee were able to argue the merits of holding additional base closure rounds, but they were unable to say whether the administration would be requesting one more rounds as part of the new budget proposal. “We will be treating the administration’s position on future BRAC rounds as pre-decisional,” John Conger, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment, said at the outset of his prepared remarks …

It came as no surprise during Thursday’s hearing of the House Armed Services’ Readiness Subcommittee that Republicans and Democrats both were adamantly opposed to a looming request from the Pentagon to hold one or more new BRAC rounds. Possibly the only reason to think the mood in Congress had changed since lawmakers last year rejected the administration’s request for two rounds is the arrival of sequestration. The administration’s primary argument to revisit the issue is that a scaling back of force structure …

If Congress is going to authorize one or more base closure rounds in this year’s defense authorization bill, a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday made clear that it won’t come as a result of support from the House subcommittee responsible for launching a new BRAC. Reiterating many of the same arguments used last year to rebuff the administration’s request for two new rounds, both Republican and Democratic members of the House Armed Services’ Readiness Subcommittee openly criticized the Pentagon’s arguments to hold a BRAC round …

The Air Force will not close Pittsburgh Air Reserve Station, home of the 911th Airlift Wing and about 1,300 reservists and 300 civilians, before fiscal 2015, the service announced Wednesday. The Air Force’s decision to restore the 911th to eight assigned aircraft through Sept. 30, 2014, followed the recommendations of an intratheater airlift working group the service established at the beginning of the year after Congress scaled back its request to trim aircraft and personnel from the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve …

The Senate Wednesday approved an amendment to its version of a fiscal 2013 continuing resolution stripping $120 million in funding for a wastewater treatment facility and other civilian infrastructure projects on Guam, after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) cited the funding as an example of pork barrel spending. The vote came after McCain and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) lifted a hold they had placed on the measure needed to keep the government running in the second half of FY 2013 …

The small businesses in communities that support military and civilian workers at installations are bracing for declining revenue as defense officials trim spending on contracts and base support services, and civilian personnel begin one-day-a-week furloughs, reports Air Force Times. “Our business is about 90 percent military,” said a used car dealer located about a half-mile from the main gates at Fort Bragg, N.C. “This is a military town. It is going to affect us all. When there’s a cut, people are scared to spend …

The short-term scramble defense officials are being forced to undertake to squeeze $46 billion out of the Pentagon’s budget over the next seven months soon will be overtaken by a long-term planning exercise to reconsider what priorities the department can afford amid an austere funding climate. The current defense strategy does not take into account the possibility that sequestration would be triggered, DOD Comptroller Robert Hale said Tuesday …

The spending package unveiled Monday by the Senate Appropriations Committee to fund the government through Sept. 30 does not grant DOD any special reprogramming authority to help it cope with the $46 billion cut it will suffer under sequestration. Senate appropriators wanted to provide all federal agencies additional budget flexibility to mitigate the cuts, but were deterred by House Republicans who said they would not go along with that plan …