Budget/Appropriations

The Pentagon wants Congress to funnel funds toward expenses for the Afghanistan war and transportation.

The House Appropriations Committee moved its first spending bill Wednesday as the military construction and veterans affairs subpanel passed a $73.3 billion measure.

The appropriations bill is $1.4 billion above the funding level enacted in 2013 and $1.4 billion below President Obama’s 2014 budget request.

The measure provides $9.9 billion for military construction projects and $63.1 billion in discretionary funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an increase of $2.1 billion compared to last year’s levels.

The Topline: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Tuesday that the Pentagon would be furloughing most if its civilian workforce by up to 11 days this year.

Hagel made the announcement at the MArk Center in Alexandria, Va., where he struck an apologetic tone to the civilians he was speaking before. He began his speech by riffing on the times we live in — saying he was “not a dinosaur” in a reference to new technologies — before he delved into the furloughs.

Hagel said that the decision to furlough was not made lightly, and that it was only undertaken when there was nothing left to cut without jeopardizing national security.

“We’ve taken it as close to the line as we can, where we’re still capable of protecting this country and the country’s efforts around the world,” Hagel said at the town-hall event.

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President Obama's Office of Management and Budget has implemented technical adjustments called for by law that reduce the $85 billion indiscriminate sequester spending cuts to about $80 billion, administration and congressional sources said Monday. 

The $4.9 billion in changes come as a result of Congress enacting a full 2013 spending bill last month. That bill extended stopgap funding for most agencies but contained full appropriations titles for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and Veterans Affairs. 

Congress added money to some accounts but also cut other accounts below sequestration levels, which hit March 1.

Sens. Levin and Inhofe said "a concrete demonstration" of the cuts may be the only way to halt sequestration.

The Pentagon faces cuts of $41 billion in 2013 and another $52 billion in 2014, if the sequester isn't reversed.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said Tuesday that it was “literally impossible” for the Pentagon to incorporate $52 billion in cuts under sequestration in its 2014 budget.

Dempsey pushed back against criticism from Republicans, who have argued the Pentagon should have lived by the budget caps set by the sequester in the 2014 budget. The Pentagon requested a base budget in 2014 of $526 billion, $52 billion above the budget caps under sequestration.

Dempsey said that because sequestration didn’t take effect until March 1, the Pentagon wouldn’t have had the time to prepare a completely separate budget for that scenario.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are looking to see if they can get traction with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to pare down the Pentagon’s duplication problem.

In a letter to Hagel Monday, the Republican senators asked the new secretary to detail how the Defense Department has addressed duplication inside the Pentagon over the past year.

The senators cited a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released this month that highlighted the areas of duplication in the department, which was a follow-up to a 2012 report.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) plan to replace this year’s sequester with money saved from drawing down the wars “undermines national security,” the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a statement that Reid’s sequester replacement proposal was “budget cowardice on the backs of our warfighters.”

“What he is proposing is not about saving money from the troop drawdown in Afghanistan; it’s about further hollowing out our military,” Inhofe said.

Reid is acting as public concern over the cuts has begun to emerge due to airport delays.