By Tyler Pager
WASHINGTON – Military chiefs on Wednesday warned automatic spending cuts could result in scaled-back services and difficulties in meeting the increasingly volatile security environment.
Representatives from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines Corps urged the members of the Senate Armed Services committee to reverse the impacts of congressionally-mandated budget cuts.
“If we continue with these arbitrary defense cuts, we will harm our military’s ability to keep us safe,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committee’s chairmen. “America’s national defense can no longer be held hostage to domestic political disputes totally separated form the reality of the threats we face.”
The automatic budget cuts, known as sequestration, were the result of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which was passed to solve the debt-ceiling crisis of 2011. A 2014 report from the Department of Defense said its budget has been cut by nearly $600 billion since the passage of the Budget Control Act.
The chiefs each gave examples of how they have been forced to compromise their services.
General Mark Welsh, the chief of staff of the Air Force, said the country’s Air Force is the smallest it has ever been. Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of Naval operations, added the Navy has the fewest number of ships since World War I.
With the rise of groups such as the Islamic State, General Raymond Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, said he fears sequestration will have dangerous long-term effects.
“In my 38 years of service, I have never seen a more dynamic and rapidly changing security environment than the one we face now,” he said. “We no longer live in a world where we have the luxury of time and stance to respond to threats facing our nation.”
Odierno said the budget cuts would jeopardize the Army’s ability to respond to simultaneous threats.
Senators agreed.
“It was expressly designed to be so stupid and unacceptable that Congress would never allow it to go into place,” said Angus King, D-Maine. “One of the reasons that it doesn’t make much sense is that we are focusing all of our budgetary attention on a declining part of the budget.”
Rather, King said mandatory programs in health care costs such as Medicaid and Medicare are the reason the budget is growing.
The military leaders also discussed the negative impacts the budget cuts are having on recruitment and retention efforts. Odierno said full sequestration would result in having to take 150,000 people out of active Army forces, thus relying more on the National Guard and reserves.
“The military is fundamentally different from other government agencies, from the private sector,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico. “You can’t hire in a colonel or a general from the private sector or from another agency.”
As Congress looks to find alternatives to automatic spending cuts, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said the committee needs to lead bipartisan efforts.
“Getting rid of sequestration I think is maybe the most imperative bipartisan challenge we have in the Senate,” she said.
