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McKeon asks OMB why sequester is delaying Pentagon budget
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) wants to know why sequestration is suddenly stopping the Pentagon’s budget work in its tracks.
McKeon sent a letter Friday to acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients questioning why the Pentagon’s 2014 budget is being delayed due to the across-the-board spending cuts that could now hit March 1.
In the letter, obtained by The Hill, McKeon asked why the Pentagon now says sequestration is preventing its budget from being completed, when OMB and told the Pentagon last year not to plan for the cuts in the months before they were set to take effect.
“If sequester was not enough of a threat to do any planning or comply with the law, I can only assume it is not enough of a threat to delay your budget,” McKeon wrote.
The Obama administration said the overall 2014 budget delay was due to the late passage of the “fiscal cliff” deal, saying that because tax and spending issues were not resolved until Jan. 2, "the administration was forced to delay some of its FY 2014 budget preparations, which in turn will delay the budget's submission to Congress."
For the Pentagon, the situation is even more precarious, with across-the-board spending cuts still up in the air that could cut the DOD budget another $45 billion in the 2013 fiscal year.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced last week the Pentagon was taking steps ahead of sequestration to try and curb its impact on the defense budget, which included a civilian hiring freeze, delays on some contracts and cutbacks on travel.
McKeon asked why DOD was able to submit a budget in 2013 with the same “unforgiving fiscal terrain.”
He quoted Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale’s testimony before the Armed Services Committee last year on the 2014 budget request, when Hale said there were no changes in the OMB guidance on the budget and sequestration was not being taken into consideration.
“If you have provided no planning assumptions related to sequestration to the federal agencies, I am unclear on the need to delay the request pending resolution of sequestration.”
McKeon and Zients have battled over sequestration planning before, as Zients testified before the Armed Services panel last year in one of the committee’s more heated hearings in recent memory, which devolved at times into a near-shouting match between Zients and Republican lawmakers.
