Carter calls for Pentagon budget without caps
The Pentagon chief has warned Congress that US President Barack Obama would veto any military budget plans that leave sequestration caps in place.
"I support [the president’s] commitment to vetoing any bill that locks in sequestration. Because to do otherwise would be both unsafe and wasteful," Ash Carter testified Wednesday at the House Armed Services Committee.
The defense secretary said that long-term military planning would be constrained by the proposed House budget, which puts a $523 billion cap on the base Pentagon budget.
The 2016 budget resolution was introduced this week by fiscal conservatives on the House Budget Committee and has set up a confrontation with congressional hawks who want a $577 billion base budget and $51 billion for overseas wars.
Though the House plan has envisioned a smaller base budget, it has put $94 billion into an emergency war fund known as the Overseas Contingency Operations, giving the Pentagon more flexibility for overseas operations.
The budget “doesn’t work, because to have the defense we need and the strategy we have laid out, we need the budget we have laid out not just this year but for the years to come,” Carter said. “It is not going to permit us to carry out the strategy as we have planned.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey also told lawmakers that the US military hopes it would be funded by an uncapped budget to implement its five-year strategy.
“We won’t have the certainty over that period if the current [House Budget Committee] strategy is followed,” Dempsey said. “Frankly, it does not do for defense what we should be doing in a predictable fashion.”
The top general said that the US military would be "20 percent smaller and our forward presence will be reduced by a third" under the mandatory sequester caps. "We will have less influence," Dempsey said.
Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, a key voice leading the charge against the House budget proposal, vowed to vote against the resolution, saying a large military budget was a matter of national security.
"The number is insufficient for what's necessary for national security," Turner said.
"We just had a hearing today with the Joint Chiefs of Staff before the Armed Services Committee. They made it very clear that it's not just an issue of the Department of Defense desiring a higher number. In order for them to protect this country, they have to have a higher number," he stated.
HRJ/HRJ
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