DoD To Launch 2011 Budget Planning
By JOHN T. BENNETT
Published: 6 July 2009
Within weeks, Pentagon brass will send their 2011 budget-building guidance to the U.S. military services - even though few of the recommendations of the Quadrennial Defense Review are in hand.
The services' draft plans will be revised after the strategy-shaping QDR is completed later this year, Defense Department officials said.
But some former officials and analysts questioned why DoD is launching the process so soon after the QDR began in the spring.
"What's striking to me about the timing of the budget guidance is that, despite the late start to the QDR, the guidance is going out to the services on the usual schedule," said Loren Thompson of the Arlington, Va.-based Lexington Institute. "It's as though everybody already knows what the review is going to find, so why wait for the answers?"
Others said the process should work just fine. This is not just another QDR at the start of a green administration, said Andrew Krepinevich, a member of the Defense Policy Board and president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
"This is a very understandable circumstance because it is a new administration, but you have a defense secretary who has been on the job for two years," Krepinevich said. "Gates already has gotten the kind of analysis and expertise with the major issues and knows what he wants to do.
"His April budget decisions showed that. A new secretary might need a QDR before making budget decisions, but this one doesn't," Krepinevich said.
No matter what the QDR finds, sources with knowledge of internal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) assessments of the federal budget picture say the 2011 budget will increase by about 1 percent .
Defense officials said the budget guidance will not change the top lines given earlier this year to military services and agencies.
"This initial guidance reminds the components of what exhibits to submit and how/where to submit the information," defense officials said in a June 30 e-mail. "It does not provide specific top line or programmatic directions. The components received their top line earlier this year, and the QDR will provide programmatic direction when it is issued."
In a June 11 memo, OMB Director Peter Orszag told federal entities to issue several versions of its 2011 budget request.
According to sister publication Federal Times, one version would be capped at 2010 levels in the 2011 budget request; a second version would cap agencies' spending at 2010 levels; and the third would cut 2011 spending at 5 percent below the levels for that year contained in the 2010 budget plan.
One former federal comptroller said he expects the Pentagon will hold back some funds in case OMB does implement a 5 percent cut for 2011, "then release more later in the process, depending on what the QDR says."
Several sources said service officials feel more shut off from the inner workings of the QDR than during previous incarnations.
And some Republican lawmakers and defense analysts have blasted the process, saying it will be an effort to justify the sweeping budget decisions Gates announced April 7.
But Gates and other Pentagon officials called this year's review a true strategic assessment they will use to "rebalance the force."
Moreover, Gates has vowed that this year's QDR will not repeat past mistakes that mismatched budgets and strategic needs.
"If the question is: will I shape ... the QDR, the answer is: You're darn right I will," the secretary said during a May 13 House Armed Services Committee hearing.
Among the issues under scrutiny by study teams:
■ What would happen if several nations become failed states?
■ How would a U.S.-China war play out?
■ What might happen if Islamic militants capture Pakistan's nuclear weapons? ■
E-mail: jbennett@defensenews.com.
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