Overnight Defense: Pentagon braces for budget crunch

THE TOPLINE: The Defense Department is bracing for the possibility of operating under an emergency spending measure for the next fiscal year, something it has never before been asked to do.

While lawmakers only intend for their stopgap funding measure — known as a continuing resolution (CR) — to last through mid-December, the Army is preparing for the possibility that funding is eventually put on auto-pilot for a whole year, according to official documents obtained by The Hill.

Under a yearlong CR, the Army would have approximately $6.6 billion less than it requested for 2016.

{mosads}That means the Army would continue to have less than one-third of its Brigade Combat Teams trained and ready to deploy, according to the documents.

The documents also say that a long-term CR would disrupt the Army’s ability to start new programs and increase the production rate for equipment, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of dollars.

Under a 12-month CR, the Pentagon would have $25 billion less in 2016 than requested, but $10 billion more than under sequestration. Sequestration refers to budget caps that require the Pentagon to slash its budget by $500 billion over a decade.

The cuts were meant to be so harmful to the Pentagon that lawmakers would seek a budget compromise before they kicked in. Lawmakers partially relieved the cuts in 2014 and 2015, but they are slated to begin again in 2016.

For the Army, a yearlong CR would mean $500 million less than if sequestration cuts kicked back in, according to the documents.

The new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1, but lawmakers don’t appear to be anywhere close to a compromise on a defense spending bill. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats blocked a 2016 defense appropriations bill to fund the Pentagon’s activities and programs.

Republicans have proposed leaving the budget caps in place while boosting defense spending through a war fund. Democrats are demanding that the caps be lifted for both defense and non-defense spending.

President Obama has vowed to veto any budget that does not also lift non-defense spending.

PENTAGON DENIES U.S.-TRAINED REBELS DEFECTED TO AL QAEDA: The Pentagon is denying reports that U.S.-trained Syrian rebels defected with their weapons to an al Qaeda affiliate.

“We believe those reports to be false,” Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters Wednesday.

Their weapons and equipment are also still under the control of those rebels, Davis insisted.

Earlier in the day, the Associated Press reported that some of the approximately 70 rebels who just returned to Syria after training say they lost contact with one of their officers. The rebel group said it is investigating reports that he defected to the al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is training vetted Syrian rebels to take on the terror group.

The program has come under heavy criticism. Originally envisaging training 5,400 rebels by the end of the year, so far the program has only trained about 120.

The allegations that the new group of trained rebels defected with their weapons appeared on social media after they entered Syria last week.

DEM SENATOR PLEDGES VA WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTIONS: Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) pledged Wednesday to introduce legislation that would protect whistleblowers at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The promise comes after a Tuesday committee hearing where three whistleblowers and a family member of one detailed the retaliation against them after they revealed the abuses and shortcomings at the VA.

Sean Kirkpatrick, who’s brother Chris committed suicide after being fired from the VA, recommended at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that whistleblower protections be extended to cover temporary or probationary employees.

Baldwin’s legislation includes that recommendation.

The legislation would also, according to a press release, protect whistleblowers forced to resign due to hostile work conditions; create a training program for supervisors to understand how to protect whistleblowers’ rights; require annual supervisor training; mandate annual employee training on how to treat whistleblower complaints; and instruct agency heads to publish online and display prominently at facilities the whistleblower rights and how to file a whistleblower complaint.

GOP SENATOR SLAMS OBAMA FOR LATEST GITMO TRANSFER: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wants assurances that Saudi Arabia will monitor a recently transferred Guantanamo Bay detainee.

“Congress should be provided with the memorandum of understanding regarding this transfer so we can fully understand the commitments made by Saudi Arabia to monitor this individual,” Cotton said in a written statement Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced Abdul Shalabi has been transferred back to his home country, bringing the number of detainees at the military facility to 114.

Shalabi, 39, has been at Guantánamo since 2002, according to military files published by The New York Times. He is alleged to have been a member of al Qaeda and a bodyguard of Osama bin Laden.

The administration has been working to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility to fulfill a promise Obama made during his first presidential campaign.

“The release of this dangerous detainee, Abdul al Shalabi, to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is another example of President Obama playing politics with national security and putting campaign promises ahead of U.S. national security interests,” Cotton said.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

— Dem pushes Kerry to step up efforts on Syria

— Ryan presses White House on Iran penalties

— Cruz backs extension of Iran Sanctions Act

— GOP lawmaker questions test scores of female Army Rangers

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