Two Actions for America’s Leaders

A pair of recent military plane crashes—one a Marine Corps F-18 and the second an Air Force B-52 —in just the last week illustrate the importance of stable defense funding and a consistent, vigilant focus on training and maintenance—the life-saving foundation of an effective fighting force. The American military is creative, resilient, responsive and, when necessary, lethal. It is also adaptive, transforming how it operates and the way it buys things to move faster and get better prices from more suppliers, while juggling the consequences of consistently unpredictable and delayed funding and reductions to its civilian workforce. The fighting force also sustains a robust pace, projecting power through steady state and contingency operations in multiple locations all at once, just as a global power should. The sustained tempo of routine and contingency response operations, requires immediate support from both the executive and legislative branches of government. On the legislative side, time is short for Congress to move on annual defense and supplemental spending. On-time appropriations are necessary to replenish strained resources for what may seem like routine business.  But when programs, plans, and activities are delayed, skipped or truncated, routine actions can turn into deadly accidents, future cost increases and unrecoverable lost time. Our elected leaders are making progress. The House and Senate authorizing committees have both completed work on the huge annual defense policy bills. The House Defense Appropriations committee has also marked up its version of the annual spending bill. But, as we watch with hope for a sustained outcome to operation Epic Fury that is beneficial to United States, the military is again sacrificing current and future readiness as it waits for financial relief.  Sounding the alarm is difficult for a military that at its core will not accept failure. Yet, the signals of strain are there. Reports of canceled Army training and projected shortfalls in the Navy operating budget are just some of the many signs. As year after year of continuing resolutions and delayed budgets test the resilience and adaptability of the force, accidents are on the rise.  The recovery of the industrial base, supply chain, equipment and facility maintenance and restoration just now underway due to last year’s positive final budget outcome and potentially catalyzed by this year’s historic funding request are jeopardized by the prospects of starting yet another fiscal year under a continuing resolution.   As key pieces of the pending agreement with Iran are completed and compliance is then verified, the United States will have to maintain the current larger presence in the Middle East. The incremental cost of doing so, estimated at just under $31 million per day, by itself is not significant in defense terms but when it comes on top of up to $50 billion accumulating so far this year for operations Epic Fury, Southern Spear, Absolute Resolve, border security and other unbudgeted costs, it can’t be absorbed without unacceptable trade-offs.   The Pentagon has little maneuver room to cover all these costs without sacrificing future readiness and modernization. That is exactly what they will likely be forced to propose as the mid-year execution review results in a large reprogramming request to Congress at the end of this month. To cover must-pay operational costs the military will have to move money from the only available sources it has—planned training, longer-term maintenance and sustainment, and modernization. Money pulled from the procurement and research accounts could delay development and manufacturing of autonomous systems, industrial base recovery, cyber offense and defense and space advancement, hurting future competitiveness . The solution is simple. But it is not easy as the political dynamics are complicated. Two things are required.   First, the Office of Management and Budget must submit contingency funding requirements now, even if the math, timing and conditions are not yet perfect, so Congress can package them with either a reconciliation bill that includes mandatory funds for defense or with bi-partisan broader federal supplemental spending, or both. Second, Congress must do something it has been mostly unable to do for years and act in a timely manner on federal spending.  In the next few months, this action should include passage of supplemental spending before the August recess, followed immediately by compromise on a two-year budget agreement that enables regular annual spending bills and puts the nation’s security and military before all other concerns.  These two actions by the nation’s leaders could inspire a country that has grown weary of division. Such success would be worthy of the 250-year anniversary of our founding and lighten our burden as we head to the ballot box this November. The post Two Actions for America’s Leaders appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .