Budget Compliance

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Pentagon is working with OMB to revise spending blueprints for fiscal year 2013, his first comments on budget matters since OMB Director Jacob Lew on Aug. 17 directed executive branch agencies to prepare plans that are 5 percent and 10 percent below FY-11 spending levels.

“As always, we will work with OMB,” Panetta told the DOD-run American Forces Press Service in a story published online Friday afternoon. “They provide all kinds of guidance as we discuss how we approach these issues.”

The Pentagon's FY-11 budget allocation, excluding war costs, is $530 billion. A 5 percent cut, or $26.5 billion, would lower the military's FY-13 base budget to $503.5 billion. A 10 percent cut to projected FY-13 Pentagon spending, a $53 billion decrement, would push DOD's topline down to $477 billion and be in line with defense spending cuts required under the new law if Congress this fall does not agree to a long-term plan to reduce the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion.

More from the AFPS story:

Defense Department officials are working with the Office of Management and Budget on guidance issued yesterday that all agencies’ fiscal 2013 budget requests be at least 5 percent less than current appropriations.

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told reporters today that Defense officials are working with OMB to determine what that will mean for the DOD budget.

“I don’t think this is necessarily a sea-change event,” he said, adding that Pentagon officials for months have been working toward a goal of cutting $400 billion from the budget over the next 10 years.