The Department of Defense’s comptroller warned that budget cuts would significantly affect the department’s planned Pacific deterrence and the nuclear triad.
Michael McCord, the department’s undersecretary of defense, or comptroller, described how possible budget cuts would affect the Pentagon’s plans in a letter dated on Friday addressed to Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee.
XI ARRIVES IN MOSCOW FOR MEETING WITH PUTIN
President Joe Biden unveiled his fiscal 2024 budget earlier this month, which includes $842 billion for the Department of Defense, which represents a $26 billion increase from the $816 billion that was enacted in the 2023 budget, while this most recent request is a tad below $100 billion more than the enacted 2022 defense budget.
House Republicans have reportedly discussed reducing fiscal 2024 discretionary spending to fiscal 2022 levels.
“The Department of Defense is concerned about both the magnitude and the potential method of implementing such reductions, which would have harmful and potentially devastating effects on our people, our mission, and our national interests,” he wrote. “The Secretary is also troubled by the prospect of the harm such reductions would inflict on our personnel and their families, and on our ability to recruit. Reductions of this magnetite would certainly force severe disruptions to our people, especially because we would still need to fund the pay raises our people deserve and to avoid involuntary separations.”
Biden’s budget includes $9.1 billion in support of the department’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which is a 40% increase from the previous year, which aligns with the department’s belief, as outlined in the National Defense Strategy, that China is the military’s “pacing challenge” and has the ability and desire to change the international world order.
But, introducing cuts would be “crippling the acceleration” of the department’s pacific initiative. Further, the president’s budget also “proposes substantial increases in funding for munitions that would be crucial to our success in the event of conflict,” while cuts would lead to “delayed or degraded” infrastructure and capability, he argued.
Cuts to fiscal 2022 could also incur up to a 40% cut in the modernization of the land- and air-based legs of the nuclear triad, and it represents nearly a 50% reduction to the funding DOD is requesting for space-based missile warning and ground-based midcourse missile defenses.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
There have been reports that the Pentagon could be saved from cuts to other areas of Biden’s spending proposal, but McCord said it’d be “just as harmful.”
“Our whole of government response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine clearly demonstrates the value of integrating security assistance, economic assistance, humanitarian assistance, sanctions, and export controls,” he explained.
