$534 billion budgeted for defense casts aside spending caps
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is asking the new Republican Congress for a base defense budget of $534 billion in 2016, the Pentagon said Monday in its annual budget release, exceeding by $35 billion the mandatory across-the-board reductions known as sequestration.
Separately, Obama is asking for an additional $51 billion to fund operations in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, as well as the continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
The administration said next year’s overall military spending was a continuation of efforts to take into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly land wars. The result, administration officials said, will be a military that continues to be capable of defeating any adversary but is too small for protracted foreign occupations.
But the budget also demonstrates a Defense Department that remains determined to invest in next-generation capabilities and big-ticket items, including naval ships, submarines, and bombers and other aircraft. The Pentagon is also seeking funding for more of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, built by the Lockheed Martin Corp.
The 2016 budget is notable because for all of the talk about how the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will reduce spending on conflicts abroad, the Defense Department is still seeking additional funding for the fight against the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq and Syria.
Defense officials hope that the issues that emerged around the world in 2014 — from the Islamic State to Russian aggression in Ukraine to the fight against the Ebola virus in West Africa — which all required a U.S. military response in some way, will lead to an overall acceptance that the United States must continue to invest heavily in the Defense Department unless it is going to retreat globally.
In short, defense officials want to erase the idea that the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will automatically lead to smaller Pentagon budgets.
“The geopolitical events of the past year only reinforce the need to resource DOD at the president’s requested funding level as opposed to current law,” the Pentagon said in its budget release.
The release said that a return to mandatory across-theboard spending cuts “would be irresponsible and dangerous, resulting in a force too small and ill equipped to respond to the full range of potential threats to the nation.”
The proposed 2016 budget also includes $70.2 billion in discretionary resources for 2016 for the Department of Veterans Affairs, a 7.8 percent increase over 2015 for everything from offering “timely health care,” to ending veterans homelessness, getting veterans jobs and helping veterans quickly earn benefits.
The boost is an attempt to serve the nearly 1 million troops who have come or are coming home from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an aging population of Vietnam veterans.
For 2016, medical care appropriations are increased by $1.3 billion over the 2016 advance appropriations request of $58.7 billion.
For 2017, the budget requests $63.3 billion in advance appropriation for three medical care appropriations: medical services, medical support and compliance, and medical facilities. That is a 5.5 percent boost over 2016.
That’s in addition to Obama’s “Veterans Choice Act,” which provided $5 billion in mandatory funding to support the hiring of doctors, nurses and other health staff members, an issue that was at the center of last year’s widespread scandal over health centers lying about patient wait times and delaying the care of veterans.
The scandal caused a shakeup in the VA and ushered in promises of widespread change.
The VA estimates it will treat 6.9 million patients in 2016 and 7 million patients in 2017.
Obama’s proposed budget is similar to “The Independent Budget (IB),” which was recommended for medical care by AMVETS, DAV (Disabled American Veterans), Paralyzed Veterans of America, and Veterans of Foreign Wars, who put together their own proposal.
“It’s certainly very encouraging to see that it has their requests in line with what we have been recommending,” said Joe Violante, DAV’s national legislative director. “The crisis did bring to light many of the problems that VA was facing, as a result of inadequate budgets for more than a decade or so.”
The proposed budget would cut the Army to an active-duty force of 475,000 soldiers, down from a previously proposed reduction to 490,000 after the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Pentagon has warned that if mandatory across-theboard cuts go back into effect, the Army would have to be reduced to around 420,000.