DoD Plans To Spend $360B More Over 6 Years

DoD Plans To Spend $360B More Over 6 Years (NSI News Source Info) October 19, 2008: As President George W. Bush prepares to leave office in three months, his budget writers at the Pentagon are planning to dump a giant budget increase on the team that replaces them. Bradley Berkson, the Pentagon's director of program analysis and evaluation, confirmed that defense budget officials are preparing spending plans for the next six years that add about $60 billion a year to the "base" military budget. That would push the planned 2010 "base" defense budget to $587 billion, up from the previously proposed $527 billion. It would add $360 billion to Pentagon spending over six years. In addition to the base budget for 2010, the Defense Department will need "supplemental" funding to keep fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Berkson said during an interview on the television show "This Week in Defense News." The interview is slated to air on Oct. 22. Berkson said wartime supplementals have been adding about $150 billion a year to total defense spending. For a departing president to propose giant defense spending increases on his way out the door "is very unusual," said Steven Kosiak, chief of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "The time for the administration to present a budget with these changes was in February, not now." Each February, the Defense Department sends Congress a defense budget request for the next year and a future year defense program, or FYDP, that projects defense spending for six years into the future. "It's not clear what has changed since February when the last FYDP was released that would indicate a need for extra money," Kosiak said. Berkson said the funds are needed because the U.S. military is adding 92,000 soldiers and Marines. "We are preparing a budget consistent with force structure President Bush has announced," he said. The additional troops will require "operations and maintenance support and capital support," Berkson said. That is, money to maintain equipment, to train troops and to buy new weapons. An extra $60 billion a year "will be sufficient to sustain those forces," he said. "The last FYDP was supposed to include money for the additional manning and equipment. That's what they told Congress," Kosiak said. What has changed in the nine months? Kosiak asked. There is no additional force structure and no new, costly programs, he said. "Were the estimates from February way off?" Or possibly, "this is an attempt to lay out a marker for the next administration to have to deal with when they come into office," Kosiak said. By adding $60 billion a year to the long-range defense spending plan, the outgoing administration could put pressure on the new administration to boost military spending that was scheduled to level off after a decade of substantial increases. Any defense spending proposal that is lower than Bush's 11th-hour bulked-up budget could be assailed as a defense spending cut. "I'm not sure how seriously this will be taken by the next administration," Kosiak said. Bush's successor should conduct a careful examination of the military to determine how much money is needed in the base budget, how much extra is needed for the wars and what kind of a military is needed for the future, he said. "This is not a flattering picture of the administration's management of budgeting in general and of defense budgeting in particular," Kosiak said.