CAPITOL HILL: If you want to get some idea just how hard it will be to reduce the yearly increases in pay and benefits that have marked the last 13 years, look at the new defense policy bill out today.
The senior leadership of the House and Senate Armed Services committees was deadlocked for several days as they agonized over whether to trim the growth of theBasic Allowance for Housing by 1 percent and to boost most co-pays for the military’s health plan, Tricare, by $3.
Lobby groups and troops advocates howled when it became clear Congress might reduce or not boost some payments. But the chairman and ranking members — from both parties — stuck to their guns, as it were.
A senior Senate aide noted that this is “not a cut. It’s a reduction in the rate of growth” of the housing allowance. A senior House aide put the case bluntly: “We had to do something now.”
A large part of the screaming centered on a very Washington agreement that no pay and benefits would be decreased until a commission on same — the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, created by the fiscal 2013 NDAA — reports back next year.
Why so much focus on pay and benefits? As the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments noted in its analysis of the administration’s 2015 budget request: “Personnel costs are just over half ($258 billion) of the DoD base budget in FY 2015, including $183 billion on pay and benefits for military personnel and $75 billion on pay and benefits for civilian employees. On a per person basis, the cost of active military personnel grew by 76 percent from FY 1998 to FY 2014.”
In the meantime, the House and Senate committees agreed to freeze generals’ pay while restraining the troops’ pay increase to 1 percent, as requested by the Obama administration.
Here are the outliers of what Congress has authorized: the topline defense budget is $503.1 billion, with an additional $17.9 billion being spent on nuclear weapons. The Overseas Contingency Operations budget is authorized to get $63.7 billion.
Just a reminder to those who don’t live this stuff every day: Congress has authorized the spending of these sums but the money must be separately appropriated. Congress must pass those bills before it goes home for the holidays or the government shuts down.
The bill is supposed to be introduced in the House this afternoon. A senior Senate aide said the bill should make it before the Senate sometime next week. The goal is to pass the bill there using a wonderful mechanism known as Unanimous Consent, whereby everyone agrees to refrain from adding amendments and requesting a vote. But, as the senior aide intoned: “Life is always difficult in the Senate.” The odds are pretty good that it will pass.
Some of the more entertaining battles between Congress and the Pentagon this year have centered on whether lawmakers would let the Pentagon do things like close bases, mothball ships and retire airplanes to save money. Of course, Congress forced the Pentagon to save that money because it passed the Budget Control Act, which imposed the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. But then Congress decided it didn’t like the ways in which the Pentagon wanted to save money because an election loomed. Lawmakers rejected base closures out of hand.
Here’s what armed services lawmakers did about the A-10 fleet, the Navy cruisers, Army helicopters and the request for base realignment and closure. They budged a tiny bit on the question of retiring the A-10 Warthog fleet. While the bill forbids their retirement, the committees did agree to let readiness levels drop for some A-10s if the Defense Secretary creates a commission to investigate whether keeping the A-10 in the air really will make it harder for the Air Force to grant its F-35 fleet Initial Operational Capability because of a mechanics shortage that may be caused by Congress’ decision to keep the A-10s flying.
The head of the National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS), whom every lawmaker respects, put the general case pretty clearly. The NDAA “sends a powerful, unmistakable message to the Pentagon: Slow down and let’s get things right,” retired Maj. Gen. Gus Hargett, said in a statement. “The congressional defense committees agreed with individuals and organizations across the defense community that the Army plan to consolidate AH-64 Apache helicopters in the active component and the Air Force plan to retire its entire A-10 fighter fleet were dangerously irreversible and required more thought and consideration.”
The bill doesn’t outright ban the controversial transfer of AH-64 Apaches from the Army National Guard to the active-duty force, but it does slow it down: no transfers are permitted in 2015 – when the Army was probably just going to do prep work anyway — and only two battalions’ worth may be transferred in 2016, half the number the Army’s “Aviation Restructuring Initiative” planned for. Potentially most important: The bill creates a commission (yes, another one) on the Army’s balance of active, Guard, and Reserve forces, a longstanding priority of NGAUS.
In addition to the aircraft which Congress won’t let retire or move, the Navy wanted to put half of its 22 cruisers into a “phase maintenance” status, which means they will be out of service until money becomes available to modernize them. The ships are about halfway through their planned service life. The armed services committee agreed to let two of the Navy cruisers retire.
This will be the last NDAA for both Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. Buck McKeon, outgoing chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services committees. They are retiring. McKeon looked very happy at his last hearing this morning. Levin, we know, will miss the Senate.
This story is based on background discussions with four senior House and Senate aides. At press time, the bill had not been filed in the House.