Budget Battle

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last week reiterated his commitment to fight sequestration as hard as possible. In an Oct. 19 speech to the Hampton Roads, VA, Chamber of Commerce, Panetta called on Congress to prevent sequestration from taking effect next January:

And as I've said time and time and time again, these additional half-trillion dollars in cuts would be devastating for our defense.

By design it wasn't intended to implemented. . . . Sequester was put into the Budget Control Act, it's a goofy mechanism.  It was basically designed to force people to do what they're supposed to do, so they put a gun to their head and said, "If we don't do what's right, we'll blow our heads off."

And they didn't do what's right, and now the damn gun is cocked to go off in January.

I have urged the Congress -- Members of both sides -- nobody wants this to happen, but they have got to come together to make the tough decisions in order to ensure that it doesn't happen.  And so we continue to need to bring pressure on the Congress to prevent these defense cuts, but more importantly, to deal with the larger fiscal cliff concern that this country is facing. . . .

Let me be clear:  No one wants this to happen and I truly believe that it ultimately will be prevented.  But for God's sake, don't just kick this can down the road.  Because if you do, it continues a cloud over our budget.

And the last thing I need, having put this strategy in place, is not to know where I'm headed in the future in terms of a stable budget.

While senior leaders from the Army and Navy said yesterday that their services are already planning for sequestration or will soon begin doing so, the Air Force has not started to plan and will not until formal guidance from the Office of Management and Budget is issued, InsideDefense.com reports this morning:

In a statement provided to Inside the Air Force this morning, service spokeswoman Tonya Racasner said the Air Force has yet to begin preparing to implement sequestration, an across-the-board cut to the defense budget of roughly $500 billion mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act. Moreover, Racasner indicated that the service will not do so until OMB tells federal agencies exactly how the cut should be administered.

In contrast, Army Secretary John McHugh said yesterday that the Army has started "initial planning" to determine how much flexibility the service will have to put those lower budgets in place. The same day, Navy Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mark Ferguson said the sea service would start planning in earnest for sequestration in late November or early December.

"DOD is working closely with OMB to understand the law and assess its impacts, but OMB has not put out detailed sequestration planning guidance to DOD and no planning has begun," Racasner said. As Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said on Aug. 1, she added, "In the unfortunate event that sequestration is actually triggered, we will work with OMB, and like all the federal agencies affected by this law, will be ready to implement it."