So Many Defense Budgets; So Little Clear Direction

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http://breakingdefense.com/2014/03/so-many-defense-budgets-so-little-clear-direction/



After two weeks of covering the 2015 defense budget, I can assure you it is confusing. Every budget includes fudges, silliness and an enormous amount of information. They are hard to make sense of and often their import doesn’t become clear for a year or two. But this budget may be the most complex one I’ve ever seen, positively bulging with fudges and silliness (e.g. OGSI, the “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative”). Mackenzie Eaglen, defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the Breaking Defense Board of Contributors, tries to clear some of the fog and discovers things are so murky that Congress will find it almost impossible to make rational, useful decisions about a proposal that will leave America’s military still unsure of what it will look like in two years. Read on. — The Editor.

So Many Defense Budgets; So Little Clear Direction
By Mackenzie Eaglen on March 13, 2014 at 6:34 PM

This is the most confusing defense budget submission in recent times. It will not help Pentagon leaders achieve the goal they seek, which is for Congress and the White House to pass a new law softening the effects of sequestration for the remainder of the decade.

While the mandatory budget cuts known as sequestration are part of the problem, good old fashioned politics loom large as well. All the parties — whether at the Pentagon, White House or Capitol Hill – are acting as rational actors in trying to avoid blame; the problem is few of their interests strategically align. So the military is left in limbo and unable, again, to plan for the long term. Instead, the services must try to simply manage the immediate mess while still cleaning up from recent year’s indecision, constantly-shifting priorities and reduced funding.

The irony of this is that the murk will only prompt more questions from the very politicians charged with providing and maintaining the Armed Forces, even though the Pentagon tried to provide answers about the continuing consequences of sequestration. The difficult task of being able to discern what is in and what is out of the President’s military budget, what is a priority and what is not, means Pentagon leaders will muddle through another year. They will miss the bigger opportunities, breakthrough and political “buy in” that come with clear-eyed awareness, unity, purpose and direction. Congress, meanwhile, will continue to fight for individual programs and one-off projects without regard for the bigger picture because they will be hard pressed to make heads or tails of it with this budget.


Hybrid Defense Budget Only Partially Reflects Sequestration

Depending on who is talking, the defense budget meets current spending caps set into law, breaks the caps, or both. The defense budget technically meets spending caps in 2015. Unless, that is, you include President Obama’s additional defense budget request for $26 billion in his Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative (OGSI).


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The military (and Congress) are taking active steps to insure that sequestration (a 5% budget cut) does not take full effect. On the other side of the coin, $8 billion dollars was removed from the Food Stamp program. Count on more cuts to social programs.