Military chiefs, Armed Services senators lament continued budget woes

The chiefs of the four military services on Thursday slammed Congress’s reliance on continuing resolutions to fund the government ahead of another fiscal year that is likely to start out the same way.

“Eight years of continuing resolutions, including a year of sequestration, have driven additional costs and time into just about everything that we do,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said. “The services are essentially operating in three fiscal quarters per year now. Nobody schedules anything important in the first quarter. The destructions that this uncertainty imposes translates directly into risk to our Navy and our nation.”

The chiefs also painted a bleak picture of the effects of sequestration — created by the Budget Control Act of 2011 — on the military, reiterating concerns about readiness to take on threats such as China or Russia after 15 years of focusing on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency.

The chiefs, who were testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, found sympathetic ears from panel members from both parties, who are hoping the testimony will propel Congress to repeal the budget law.

“We have to move away from sequestration, and one of the issues that has been illustrated by your testimony is not just the limits on spending, it’s the uncertainty,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the committee. “Adm. Richardson, you pointed out that you only really operate three quarters of the year, and one quarter is just sort of standing around wishing and hoping.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the committee, pinned blame on both President Obama and Congress for failing to lift budget caps and harming military readiness.

“Who is to blame for the increasing risks to the lives of the men and women who volunteer to serve and defend our nation?” McCain said. “The answer is clear: we are. The president and the Congress, Democrats and Republicans, all of us. With budget debates looming ahead, the question now is whether we’ll find the courage we’ve lacked for five long years.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was more blunt, calling Congress and the president a threat to the military.

“Do you agree with me, when you rank the threats to the military, you’d have to put Congress and the president in that mix if we don’t fix sequestration,” Graham asked the chiefs, who didn’t answer. “I’ll answer it for you. Yes.”

Graham also lamented that the military’s repeated warnings about readiness issues haven’t changed anything.

“Does anybody else listen to these hearings but us,” he said.

Amid a stalled appropriations process and a deadline to fund the government at the end of the month, the Senate is expected to vote next week on a continuing resolution (CR) that would last through Dec. 9. House conservatives, meanwhile, want a longer-term CR to avoid a lame-duck session.

Gen. David Goldfein, chief of staff of the Air Force, said a long-term CR would mean $1.3 billion less for the Air Force than what was in their budget request. That translates to three fewer KC46 aircraft and fewer munitions to use against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), he said, among other examples of cuts.

“We’ll be procuring munitions at the FY16 rates,” he said. “In the FY17 budget we were actually able to forecast based on what we believe we will be dropping in [the] current fight. That will go away, and so we’ll be procuring preferred munitions at a lower rate, which not only affects us, all of us in engaged in the campaign, but it also affects our coalition partners who are relying on us, as well, for preferred munitions.”

The lack of certainty also affects the military’s ability to retain troops, said Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Marine Corps.

“We can buy all the planes and ships and vehicles and we want, but we’ve got to keep — this is a volunteer force,” he said. “This is a recruited and retained force, and they watch everything that’s going on. These young men and women are very smart, and they want to know that there’s commitment that they can count on as they decide whether to stay in.”

Gen. Mark Milley, chief of staff of the Army, also said budget uncertainty promotes inefficiency and cost overruns.

“It’s not good,” he said, “and it needs to end.”