Hagel Highlights

As the formal introductions begin, we've highlighted select responses to advance policy questions the nominee provided the Senate Armed Services Committee.

On the impact of a full-year continuing resolution on DOD through FY-13:

A year-long CR reduces the Department’s funding flexibility by putting it into a straitjacket, spending money on last year’s priorities not this year’s. Continuing resolutions force the Department to operate inefficiently because it does not know what projects will be funded or at what level of funding. The money provided in the continuing resolution does not provide sufficient funding in the right places, particularly critical operating accounts which could harm military readiness. In addition, continuing resolutions generally push the Department to use month-to-month contracts and prohibits doing “new starts” in military construction or acquisition programs, which leads to inefficiency and backlogs in contracting.

Impact of sequester:

As Secretary Panetta has repeatedly stated, sequestration – both the size and the arbitrary manner of these cuts – would be devastating to the Department. It would harm military readiness and disrupt each and every investment program. Based on my assessment to date, I share his concerns. I urge the Congress to eliminate the sequester threat permanently and pass a balance deficit-reduction plan. Impacts of sequester could include the need to revise the defense strategy, fewer day-to-day global activities reducing our presence and partnerships, less training including cuts to flying and steaming hours which would reduce readiness, near universal disruption of investment including 2,500 procurement programs, research projects, and military construction reduced and delayed weapons system buys with resulting price increases, furloughs and hiring freezes for civilian workers resulting in reduced maintenance of weapons systems, oversight of contracts and financial systems; negative effects on morale and welfare of the force including recruiting and retention problems.

Impact on readiness of a combined year-long CR and sequester:

It is my understanding that under this scenario, the Department would be forced to cut over $40B from our budget in a little over half a year, using a mechanistic formula to do it. It would result in 20% cuts in the Department’s operating budgets. As the Joint Chiefs have warned, such cuts, if allowed to occur, would damage our readiness, our people, and our military families. It would result in the grounding of aircraft and returning ships to port, reducing the Department’s global presence and ability to rapidly respond to contingencies. Vital training would be reduced by half of current plans and the Department would be unable to reset equipment from Afghanistan in a timely manner. The Department would reduce training and maintenance for non-deploying units and would be forced to reduce procurement of vital weapons systems and suffer the subsequent schedule delays and price increases. Civilian employees would be furloughed for up to 22 days. All of these effects also negatively impact long-term readiness. It would send a terrible signal to our military and civilian workforce, to those we hope to recruit, and to both our allies and adversaries around the world.