Defense Secretary Ash Carter pleaded with members of Congress to pass a federal budget during a hearing on Capitol Hill just days before the start of the new fiscal year.
Carter told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that ongoing budget instability is harming national security. Heading into another year with a continuing resolution is a “deplorable state of affairs,” he said, during the hearing on national security challenges and ongoing military operations.
“It baffles our friends, emboldens our foes, it's managerially and strategically unsound, and it's dispiriting to our troops, to their families, and our workforce,” Carter said.
DoD likely will be forced to operate without a formal budget for the first few months of the new fiscal year, which kicks off Oct. 1. In place of a defense authorization act, the Pentagon will run off of a continuing resolution, a stop-gap measure that will fund the government for the first few months of the new fiscal year.
Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers during the hearing that he's also concerned about the possibility of another round of steep federal budget cuts that could go into effect in 2018. With the military taking on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in places like Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan at the same time countries like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are developing new military capabilities, Dunford said it's important to stay ahead of the game.
“I am concerned about readiness today, but I'm more concerned about maintaining a competitive advantage in the future,” he said. “If we fail to modernize the joint force, we will be at a disadvantage in the future.”
Video credit: DoD
Republican Sen. John McCain, the committee's chair, said Congress has failed to provide the military with the resources it needs to meet its requirements around the world. But then he slammed President Barack Obama for “holding the defense budget as a hostage to extract political concessions for greater non-defense spending.”
“After all, it is the duty of the commander in chief to be the strongest advocate for the needs of our military,” McCain said.
Carter stressed that while the government can operate on a continuing resolution temporarily, the longer it lasts, the more damage it can cause. If there's no formal budget by December, for example, it will undermine DoD's plan to quadruple its European Reassurance Initiative at a time when NATO allies are working to deter Russian aggression, he said.
The defense secretary also said he's unable to support any approach to the defense budget that “moves us toward sequestration or away from bipartisanship” - especially, he added, if it shortchanges the needs of the country's warfighters.
Sen. Angus King, a Maine Independent, called Congress' inability to reach bipartisan agreements on budgetary matters “one of the greatest threats to American security.”
“We've taken more troops off the battlefield, more airplanes out of the air, more ships out of the ocean than any enemy has done,” King said. “[And that's] by our inability to work out what ordinary people on the street think people ought to be able to figure out in a relatively short amount of time.”