START Promises

House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) is calling on President Obama to follow through on the promises the president made to the Senate during the ratification of the follow-on Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 2010.

"Without the [nuclear weapons] modernization program and the President's promises to fund and implement it, concerns in the Senate about the treaty would have prevented it from being modified," according to a statement accompanying a June 5 letter Turner released today.

"For the first time, the U.S. has signed a treaty that required it to undertake unilateral reductions," Turner's letter states, adding: "There is a growing concern, including by your former Secretary of Defense, about the safety, security, reliability, and credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent."

The congressman's letter notes that Obama in December 2012 had stated about the nuclear weapons modernization plan "[t]hat is my commitment to the Congress-that my administration will pursue these programs and capabilities for as long as I am President."

In his letter, Turner complains that the administration's fiscal year 2013 nuclear weapons modernization budget request "was significantly below what you promised in November 2010 and as much as $4 billion below what is projected for just the next five years in the section 1251 plan."

Additionally, the lawmaker cites a May 18 Office of Management and Budget memo which states that "overall agency request for 2014 should be five percent below . . . the 2013 budget."

InsideDefense.com reported yesterday that OMB is exempting the Pentagon from that guidance, according to a government spokesman. Further:

"All agencies are being asked to identify efficiencies and ways to get the most from taxpayer dollars," OMB spokesman Kenneth Baer said in a statement to InsideDefense.com today. "The Department of Defense, however, is in a unique situation as it already has put together a detailed spending plan -- consistent with the Budget Control Act -- for the next five, and even 10, years.

"So, while DOD will have to identify areas of savings and efficiency, they are not being asked to submit a 5-percent-cut scenario," he added.

Specifically, the Pentagon is relieved from budget guidance issued by OMB acting director Jeffrey Zients on May 18, in a three-page memo to department and agency heads instructing them to assume smaller FY-14 budgets than those laid out by the administration in its FY-13 budget proposal sent to Congress in February.

The government "will need to make hard choices," Zients wrote. Discretionary spending levels -- enacted last summer as part of a deal between the White House and House Republican leaders to raise the debt ceiling -- will "continue to sharply constrain discretionary spending," his memo adds. "Unless your agency has received different guidance from OMB, your overall agency request for 2014 should be 5 percent below the net discretionary total provided for your agency for 2014 in the 2013 budget."

Accordingly, the Pentagon is expected to build an FY-14 budget in line with spending levels outlined in February -- a topline of $533.6 billion in the base budget, a sum that allows for no real growth, or increases above the rate of inflation.

Pentagon leaders last fall revised the military's long-term spending plans in accordance with spending levels required by the Budget Control Act, cutting $486.7 billion from planned spending through 2021. DOD's FY-13 base budget proposal, $525.4 billion, marked a $45.3 billion reduction from earlier plans. In total, the Pentagon trimmed $259.4 billion from its five-year spending plan to comply with discretionary spending levels enacted last summer.