Budget/Appropriations

The Pentagon is continuing its push for Congress not to make big changes to the Pentagon’s budget this year, even if the pleas mostly fall flat on Capitol Hill.

Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was the latest Pentagon official to urge Congress to lay off the budget, warning that making changes was a zero-sum game” as the Pentagon prepares for a cut of $487 billion over the next decade.

“Every dollar the U.S. spends on old and unnecessary programs is a dollar we lose from new and necessary strategic investments,” Carter said at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute Wednesday. “When something is added to the budget that’s not needed, we are forced to take out something that matters.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Tuesday that coming automatic budget cuts known as the "sequester" would hollow out the military and particularly hurt South Carolina because it would likely target the F-35 fighter planes based in his state.

"It would be devastating to South Carolina," Graham said, according to The Item of South Carolina. "The F-35 would be terminated. A cut of this magnitude will hollow out the greatest fighting force in the world."

A host of contentious issues are setting up a clash between House and Senate on the Defense authorization bill.

The Senate Veterans' Affairs committee chairwoman said lawmakers had ignored the long-term funding needs of war veterans.

The Senate has decided to pump millions of dollars more into the Pentagon's manhunt for African rebel leader Joseph Kony, sparking questions on how much longer American troops will be tied down with the mission. 

The Pentagon will have to work a little harder if it wants to eventually run its tanks, ships and planes on something other than fossil fuels, thanks to defense lawmakers in the Senate. 

The Senate Armed Services Committee did not change a Pentagon plan to retire the Global Hawk Block 30 drones, upholding one of the more contentious budget-cutting decisions the Pentagon made.

The Senate panel’s decision to leave the Northrop Grumman drone terminated in its version of the Defense authorization bill puts the committee at odds with the House, which retained funding for the Global Hawk drone in the Defense bill that passed last week.

The upper chamber was reacting to a tribal court sentencing to prison a doctor who helped find Osama bin Laden

The Senate bill authorizes about $4 billion less than House legislation, setting up a fight in conference. 

The topline: Defense and foreign aid spending will take center stage Thursday, when members of the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations committees mark up the fiscal 2013 spending bills for both the Pentagon and State Department. Defense lawmakers have spent most of the week behind closed doors, putting the final touches on their version of the DOD budget bill. 

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) did shed a little light into the ongoing deliberations when she opened the Senate Committee's Readiness subpanel to the public. McCaskill opened the hearing as a way to protest the traditional Senate practice of marking up the defense bill in private. But in the end, aside from announcing $200 million in cuts to operations and maintenance, McCaskill's subcommittee disclosed very little about their markup. 

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