Earlier in February, the Obama Administration released its fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget request for the Department of Defense (DoD) with a base budget of $534 billion and an overseas operations contingency (OCO) budget of $51 billion. The President’s budget submission does not account for sequestration, which imposes a base budget cap of $499 for the DoD and does not affect the OCO budget. A strong consensus exists among defense and budgetary analysts that Congress is unlikely to repeal the Budget Control Act (BCA) in FY 2016. House Armed Services Committee Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash.) remarked, “I fully expect that Congress will again fight proposals to allow the Department of Defense to deal with the damaging effects of sequestration. We have seen this act before.”
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The Carl Levin and Howard P. McKeon National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year (FY) 2015 passed the Senate Friday night by a bipartisan vote of 89-11, after the House passed the measure 300-119. The bill includes $495.9 billion for the Department of Defense’s (DoD) base budget, $63.7 billion overseas contingency operations (OCO) budget, and $17.9 billion for the Department of Energy related to maintaining the nation’s nuclear arsenal (Alexander, 2014). The FY 2015 NDAA also institutes a host of provisions related to curbing military benefits, creates a new DoD leadership position – the Under Secretary of Defense for Business Management and Information (USDBMI), and provides the Navy with billions in extra procurement funding.
The 2015 NDAA enacts measures to curtail rising DoD personnel costs, such as increasing co-pays related to prescription drugs by $3, decreasing pay raises to 1% - below the current rate of inflation, and prohibiting further wage raises for flag officers. Departing Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin expressed his concern that the spending caps imposed by sequestration, in conjunction with rising of personnel costs will erode military readiness.
