Budget/Appropriations

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.

The congressional defense committees are getting into the meat of their annual budget hearings this week, with more than a dozen hearings scheduled.

Most hearings will not be as high-profile as those that took place last week, when Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Marin Dempsey made two appearances on Capitol Hill.

Still, a slew of top military officials will be on Capitol Hill to make their case for contentious programs and policies that are up in the air as the committees prepare to mark up the Defense authorization bill.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other Republican senators told Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Wednesday to detail how the Pentagon would cut $52 billion from its 2014 budget under sequestration.

Senators pressed Hagel Wednesday over why the Pentagon’s 2014 budget request was $52 billion above the caps set by sequestration when the sequester is law.

The Pentagon would face another across-the-board cut in 2014 if its budget is above the sequester caps set by the Budget Control Act.

“I appreciate the fact that you put together a budget that ignores the realities of the law today,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told Hagel at Wednesday’s Senate Armed Services hearing. “It would be very helpful in adjusting for those realities if you share with Congress what the budget would be if the existing law is implemented.”

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said Wednesday that he supports a one-year fix to reverse sequestration in 2014.

Levin said at a Senate Armed Services hearing Wednesday that Congress should find a one-year solution to sequestration if a “grand bargain” to avert the cuts could not be reached.

“We simply cannot continue to ignore the effects of sequestration,” Levin said at the hearing, where Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey were to testify about the 2014 budget.

Levin said the Pentagon didn't "put their money where their mouth is" by not including costs for closures in 2014.

Military spending around the world dipped in 2012 for the first time since 1998, due in part to U.S. spending cuts.

New York’s annual Fleet Week and a major July 4 fireworks celebration are the latest small-ticket budget items to get hit in a major way by the across-the-board sequester cuts.

The New York Post reported Thursday that the Navy is drastically scaling back its Fleet Week plans in New York City, allowing only local Navy ships will be able to participate. Most of the ships that dock in New York harbors come from Virginia and Florida.

Fleet Week costs the Navy between $7 million and $10 million, including a $2 million payment to the city for using its docks, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Topline: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel defended the Pentagon’s $526.6 billion 2014 budget before a skeptical House Armed Services Committee Thursday during his first congressional hearing as Pentagon chief.

Hagel faced questions on the $150 billion reduction to defense spending over the next decade, on plans to close bases and on how the Pentagon is dealing with sequestration.

And he had a much better time than he did in his last hearing: his shaky performance at his Senate confirmation hearing.

The secretary fended off questions about whether he accepted the cuts to the Pentagon under sequestration, saying that he had to deal with the reality of sequestration.

“The president did not instruct me when he asked me to consider doing this job ... to go over and cut the heart out of the Pentagon,” Hagel said. “That wasn't his instruction to me nor in any implication in any way.”

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