Final data point: If the Pentagon presents budgets equal to or less than the levels set by the Budget Control Act (sequestration’s enabler) then the Pentagon has complete freedom to move its money around and would not face the debilitating and strategically useless prospect of being forced to cut 10 percent from each account, Harrison told us.
Meanwhile, as we first reported, Reps. Paul Ryan and Jim Cooper presented their bill to help free DoD from that requirement it cut from each account. To do so, the Pentagon would have to declare it “an urgent national priority or the consequences of a national emergency resulting from such sequestration, as determined by the Secretary of Defense.”
I asked Rep. Randy Forbes, chairman of the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee, about the bill a few hours after it was introduced. He was not impressed.
“I don’t think their bill is the right approach for us to take because I am very concerned about turning all the reprogramming over to the Pentagon, because the House has an oversight role it must continue to play,” Forbes said.
The most positive thing we heard this week in terms of defense planning concerned the Ryan-Cooper bill. “This is a good sign in that serious folks on both sides of the aisle are looking at this defense spending,” a congressional aide told us. Maybe, but it’s almost certainly not enough.