Pentagon Officials Work With OMB on Budget Guidance

WASHINGTON, Aug. 19, 2011 — 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.
The bud­get for fis­cal 2011, which ends Sept. 30, pro­vides $528.9 bil­lion for the base bud­get and $159 bil­lion for over­seas con­tin­gency oper­a­tions.
“As always, we will work with OMB,” Defense Sec­re­tary Leon E. Panet­ta said dur­ing a broad­er inter­view with Amer­i­can Forces Press Ser­vice and oth­er mil­i­tary media rep­re­sen­ta­tives today. “They pro­vide all kinds of guid­ance as we dis­cuss how we approach these issues.”
Bud­get offi­cials are try­ing to antic­i­pate some of the chal­lenges the gov­ern­ment will face in the months ahead. Panet­ta, who was the OMB direc­tor for Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, said his focus remains on the $400 bil­lion – a tar­get in line with $350 bil­lion Con­gress iden­ti­fied in leg­is­la­tion to raise the debt ceil­ing and reduce the deficit that Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma signed Aug. 2.
Under the new law, a bipar­ti­san con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee will work to iden­ti­fy $1.5 tril­lion in fed­er­al bud­get sav­ings and make a rec­om­men­da­tion to Con­gress by Nov. 23. If Con­gress fails to act on the committee’s rec­om­men­da­tion by Dec. 23, an across-gov­ern­ment spend­ing cut of $1.2 tril­lion over 10 years will go into effect in a process known as “seques­tra­tion.” Half of those cuts would come from nation­al secu­ri­ty spend­ing, includ­ing the depart­ments of Defense, Home­land Secu­ri­ty and oth­ers.
Panet­ta said he is focused on the $400 bil­lion tar­get as a goal that can be met with­out endan­ger­ing defense. “As to oth­er sce­nar­ios that OMB may direct, I frankly have said that if we have to go to a sequester sce­nario where we have to dou­ble defense cuts here, that it will be dis­as­trous,” he said.
Mean­while, OMB typ­i­cal­ly advis­es agen­cies of their top-line bud­get requests in Novem­ber. The guid­ance OMB released yes­ter­day advis­es agen­cies to pre­pare for over­all bud­get requests that are 5 per­cent below their cur­rent appro­pri­a­tions, while also iden­ti­fy­ing dis­cre­tionary spend­ing reduc­tions that are at least 10 per­cent below their cur­rent lev­els. The memo qual­i­fies that the guid­ance should be fol­lowed “unless your agency has been giv­en explic­it direc­tion oth­er­wise by OMB.”
The memo from OMB Direc­tor Jack Lew fur­ther advis­es agen­cies to “dou­ble down” on pro­grams that “pro­vide the best oppor­tu­ni­ty to enhance eco­nom­ic growth,” cut or elim­i­nate low-pri­or­i­ty and inef­fec­tive ones, and con­sol­i­date duplica­tive ones. 

By fol­low­ing the guid­ance, Lew said, “you will pro­vide the pres­i­dent with the infor­ma­tion to make the tough choic­es nec­es­sary to meet the hard spend­ing tar­gets in place and the needs of the nation.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →