WASHINGTON -- The billions in defense budget cuts set to begin Friday will have a swift and severe impact on military readiness, and Congress needs to take fast action to stop them, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Tuesday in an eleventh-hour bid to keep the reductions from going into effect.
Testifying before the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, the five uniformed leaders of the military branches described how national security would be put at risk if they are forced to make deep decreases in spending for personnel, training and equipment modernization programs.
Their appearance marked the fourth time in the last three weeks that top Pentagon leaders have testified before a congressional oversight committee about how the country's fiscal outlook affects the armed forces. Their warnings of a looming readiness crisis haven't changed, but the pending deadline has made them more urgent.
"If we do not have the resources to train and equip the force, our young men and women will pay the price, potentially with their lives," said Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff.
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Despite the dire predictions, many of the cuts to hit the Defense Department and other federal agencies would come in later years and could be partially offset by cuts in programs that are wasteful or behind schedule. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., criticized Defense Department officials earlier this month for "adding drama" to the budget debate by publicly highlighting the cuts to the readiness accounts. Hunter, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
The automatic cuts, known as a sequester, are scheduled to begin Friday and are the result of Congress' failure to trim the deficit by $1.2 trillion over a decade. The Pentagon faces a $46-billion budget reduction through the end of September, and additional cuts would come in future years, as long as the sequester remains in effect. The military also has to absorb a $487-billion reduction in defense spending over the next 10 years mandated by the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.
The military's fiscal challenges are further complicated by the lack of a budget for the current fiscal year, according to defense officials. Congress hasn't approved one. Instead, lawmakers have been passing bills called continuing resolutions, which keep spending levels at last year's rates. That means the Pentagon is operating on less money than planned, compounding the financial problem facing the armed forces.
The main problem with the sequester is not the size of the cuts to the defense budget, but rather the across-the-board way they are administered, according to Todd Harrison of the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
The military has very little flexibility under the law to make smart spending reductions, he said. "High-priority, successful programs must be cut by the same percentage as wasteful, redundant and low-priority programs," Harrison said.
Yet even with the sequester, the Pentagon will still maintain an annual budget, adjusted for inflation, of more than $500 billion a year for the rest of the decade. That's a modest reduction when compared with the previous drawdowns in defense spending that came after the wars in Korea and Vietnam and the Cold War, Harrison said.
Gen. James Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, told the defense subcommittee that America's allies and enemies are watching to determine whether the country remains able to meet its commitments overseas. "Sequestration viewed solely as a budget issue would be a grave mistake," he said.
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