Welsh: Sequestration Bill Is Due for AF Space Launch Infrastructure

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh III told a Senate committee today that the bill has come due for a number of infrastructure activities that were postponed because of sequestration, including space launch infrastructure.  By law, sequestration returns in FY2016 and Welsh and the other military service chiefs warned about the impacts if the law is not changed.

Welsh began his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) by commenting that the Air Force is the smallest it has ever been, with 54 fighter squadrons, down from the 188 at the time of Operation Desert Storm in 1990, and 200,000 fewer active duty airmen than the 511,000 in place at that time.  Additional cuts will be required if sequestration — part of the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) — returns, making the Air Force “even smaller and less able to do the things that we’re routinely expected to do,” Welsh said.

“Now, I would like to say that that smaller Air Force would be more ready than it’s ever been, but that’s not the case,” he continued.  Even though the last two years, when BCA budget caps were relaxed, have permitted improvements, there is a “broader readiness issue” involving infrastructure, including space launch infrastructure, that was “intentionally underfunded” in order to ensure individual and unit readiness instead.   “That bill is now due, but BCA caps will make it impossible to pay,” Welsh warned.

More broadly, he worried about technological gaps that could develop if sequestration is not reversed.  One of those is space:  “we cannot forget that that is one of the fastest growing and closing technological gaps,” Welsh said.   Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert also mentioned space capabilities as an area of concern saying that “we’re slipping behind and our advantage is shrinking very fast” in “electronic attack, the ability to jam, the ability to detect seekers, radars, satellites ….” 

SASC is a friendly audience for airing such concerns.  SASC Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) referred to the “mindlessness of sequestration” and its requirement to cut $1 trillion from defense spending by 2021.  “If we in Congress don’t act, sequestration will return in full in fiscal year 2016, setting our military on a far more dangerous course.”   The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), put it in a broader context saying that sequestration relief is needed at DOD “and for other critical national priorities, including public safety, infrastructure, health and education.”

The BCA was enacted in 2011 when Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the Obama Administration could not reach agreement on how to fund the government in the face of political gridlock over Republican insistence that the deficit be reduced through spending cuts alone and Democratic insistence that it be achieved through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.   A congressional “supercommittee” was created to find a solution, with the “poison pill” that if they did not, then automatic across-the-board cuts — sequestration — would ensue for all departments and agencies funded by congressional appropriations.  They did not reach agreement, and sequestration went into effect.  Across-the-board cuts do not allow choosing priorities — every budget account is cut by the same percentage.  Republican and Democrats in Congress and the White House oppose sequestration and agreed to temporary relief through the Ryan-Murray agreement in December 2013, but that covered only FY2014 and FY2015.

President Obama is expected to submit his FY2016 budget request on Monday (February 2), the formal kick-off of the FY2016 budget debate.  The BCA was enacted when the House was controlled by Republicans and the Senate by Democrats.   Now both chambers are under the control of Republicans, but whatever they pass still must be signed into law by a Democratic President, so the outcome of the debate is still very much up in the air.  Whether either side has moderated its views on the amount of deficit reduction required or how to achieve it will become known in the coming months.