Dialing spending back to Fiscal Year 2022 levels would cost the Department of Defense (DOD) at least $100 billion next year and set back weapons procurement by more than $630 billion over the next five years, the Pentagon’s chief number-cruncher told a Senate panel on May 11.
But the 14 percent slash in the military’s $842 billion Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) budget request that would be enacted under such a “FY22 plus 1 percent” plan calculated by DOD Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord doesn’t capture the costs of fiscal uncertainty on national security, Pentagon officials insist.
The budget impasse between House Republicans and the Biden administration, and the approaching June 1 default deadline on the national debt, is not going unnoticed, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee….