The Senate Armed Services Committee's fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill would cost $634 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released yesterday:
That total includes an estimated $89 billion for the cost of overseas contingency operations, primarily in Afghanistan. In addition, S. 3254 would prescribe personnel strengths for each active-duty and selected-reserve component of the U.S. armed forces. CBO estimates that appropriation of the authorized amounts would result in outlays of $622 billion over the 2013-2017 period.
The bill also contains provisions that would increase or decrease costs of discretionary defense programs in 2014 and future years. Those implicit authorizations would affect force structure, DoD compensation and benefits, DoD’s use of multiyear procurement authority, and other programs and activities. CBO has analyzed the costs of a select number of those authorizations and we estimate they would raise net costs by about $42 billion over the 2014-2017 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts for those years. Those amounts are not included in the totals in the previous paragraph because funding for those activities would be covered by specific authorizations in future years.
S. 3254 contains provisions that would decrease direct spending by $31 million over the 2013-2017 period and $75 million over the 2013-2022 period. Because enacting the legislation would affect direct spending, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. Enacting the bill would not affect revenues.