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CQ TODAY May 21, 2007 – 8:47 p.m.
After War, a Military Budget Crunch Looms
By Josh Rogin, CQ Staff
The Pentagon could face a budget crisis in the coming years if the House’s fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill becomes law, military budget analysts say.
Politically popular increases in personnel levels, pay, and health benefits would create obligations with wide-ranging effects, including significantly curtailing modernization of U.S. forces, according to Bush administration officials, congressional watchdogs and independent defense experts.
For now, lawmakers are focused on a protracted war that has pushed the military to its breaking point coupled with the politically irresistible urge to provide added pay and benefits for men and women in uniform. Military spending has ballooned since the 2001 terrorist attacks, with little regard for deficit concerns.
After the Iraq War winds down and emergency defense spending subsides, the effects of long-term force structure decisions made during wartime likely will ripple through future defense budgets and could have significant implications for defense transformation.
With significantly fewer resources, the Pentagon would be forced to choose between paying soldiers or purchasing new weapons.
“We’re adding what amounts to entitlement programs in the defense budget, and we will be paying for these literally forever,” said Winslow Wheeler, an expert on military reform at the Center for Defense Information, a nonpartisan military research institute in Washington.
Boosting People Programs
The House passed the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill (HR 1585) on May 17, which would authorize billions of dollars less than President Bush sought for large modernization programs and billions more for greater benefits for soldiers and their families, military readiness and a larger ground force.
Senate subcommittees will begin marking up that chamber’s version on Tuesday, and lawmakers there are likely to go along with House action on personnel and benefits.
Gordon Adams, who oversaw national security spending in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during the Clinton administration, said Congress has found it “almost impossible” to resist increasing benefits for the military while U.S. forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan.
