Inside Defense
(Correction: The original version of this story said President Obama approved the $60 billion increase to the Pentagon's budget. After the story was published OMB spokesman Tom Gavin said "no decisions have yet to be made by the president." InsideDefense.com regrets the error; the story has been updated.)
Dec. 3, 2009 -- The White House Office of Management and Budget has approved a nearly $60 billion increase in the Pentagon's base budget between fiscal years 2011 and 2015, a previously unreported hike that gives the Defense Department what Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this year said was necessary to sustain the U.S. military's five-year investment plan -- 2 percent real growth.
OMB this week notified DOD of a nearly $15 billion topline increase to its FY-11 budget plan, a sum that translates to a 2.7 percent increase after inflation, Pentagon sources said. This boost, according to an analysis by InsideDefense.com, would bring non-war related military spending in FY-11 to $556.4 billion.
This so-called “pass back” guidance -- one of the final steps in crafting the Pentagon's annual spending proposal -- also allocates approximately $11 billion extra annually between FY-12 and FY-15, a sum that amounts to 2 percent real growth each year, sources said.
“This is substantial topline relief,” said one Pentagon official.
A defense analyst privy to figures in the OMB guidance said the budget boost amounts “to a major victory for Gates.”
Sources say a sizable portion of the additional funds would pay for unforeseen DOD health care bills.
OMB spokesman Tom Gavin declined to comment on the pass back guidance.
“We're in the process of working with agencies on their budgets. But details are all predecisional and the president has not made any final decision,” Gavin told InsideDefense.com.
Gavin said the pass back process “is an internal deliberative process and is likely to change several times in several ways between now and February first,” when the Obama administration formally submits its FY-11 budget proposal to Congress.
However, Pentagon officials are moving quickly to lock in changes to the FY-11 budget proposal that include the 2 percent increases.
Robert Hale, the Pentagon comptroller, and Christine Fox, director of the office of cost assessment and program evaluation, have not yet circulated details of the fiscal guidance, Pentagon officials said.
Their respective offices are preparing a trio of resource management decisions (RMDs) -- classified budget and program guidance from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to the services -- that will direct a raft of changes to the Pentagon's budget.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense has advised the services that these RMDs will be issued in draft form as soon as next Monday, sources said. The military services will then have three days to comment on them and return them to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Senior Pentagon officials expect to tweak budget decisions until the week before Christmas, sources said.
The Pentagon is slated to formally turn over control of the FY-11 budget in early January, sources said.
In May, OMB published a five-year Pentagon budget forecast that set the base budget at $541.8 billion in FY-11, $550.7 billion in FY-12, $561.1 billion in FY-13 and $574 billion in FY-14.
Testifying May 14 to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the FY-10 budget request, Gates warned that the Pentagon's five-year investment plan required a 2 percent annual increase above inflation.
“Based on the briefings that I've gotten,” the defense secretary said, “for us to hold steady the program that we have in front of you for FY-10, to hold that steady in the outyears, we will need at least two percent real growth in the defense budget.”
Providing 2.7 percent growth after inflation in FY-11 translates to a $14.6 percent increase, which would bring the Pentagon FY-11 budget to $556.4 billion.
Department officials say that during the budget and program review this fall, Gates advised senior officials not to count on a top-line increase.
Still, the Office of the Secretary of Defense in October proposed a series of ways the Pentagon could spend additional funds, if OMB approved a top line increase. Among those proposals were substantial increases in spending to shipbuilding accounts and helicopter procurement, according to DOD sources (DefenseAlert, Oct. 13).
The White House decision to boost the military's base budget comes a year after the Defense Department, without an endorsement from OMB during the final months of the Bush administration, drew up an alternative spending plan that tacked $57 billion onto the base budget.
The Obama administration rejected that spending plan, but nonetheless allocated the Pentagon a 4 percent hike in FY-10 above the spending target officially set by the Bush administration in its final year.
On Oct. 29, Inside the Pentagon reported that OMB would likely boost DOD's FY-11 budget by several billion dollars. -- Jason Sherman
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