The Pentagon will unveil its fiscal year 2020 presidential budget (PB) request Feb. 4, the department’s chief military spokesman said Dec. 10.
Whether the topline will be $700 billion or $750 billion remains to be seen. Army Col. Robert Manning declined to comment on recent reports that President Trump is now considering submitting a $750 billion defense budget next year during an off-camera press briefing at the Pentagon Monday.
“We are working with [the Office of Management and Budget] to determine the department’s topline budget number that supports a strategy-driven budget,” Manning said, adding, “As we said previously, the department needs predictable, stable funding to continue to implement the national defense strategy.”
Such a topline would be an about-face from Trump’s declaration just two months ago that all cabinet budgets would be slashed by 5 percent in the next fiscal year, and a Dec. 3 declaration on Twitter that the FY ’19 $716 billion budget for defense was “Crazy!”
In late October, Pentagon officials began to lay out two budget proposals – one with a $733 billion topline, and one at $700 billion to reflect a 5 percent cut – for the “050” budget function that includes funding for the DoD, along with other defense-related spending from other agencies such as nuclear programs at the Department of Energy, Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said at the annual Military Reporters and Editors conference (Defense Daily, Oct. 26).
Whatever topline is ultimately submitted, next year the 116th Congress must also decide whether to reimpose the budget spending caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act, which were suspended for the past two years.
Service leaders, including Joints Chiefs of Staff Chairman Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford and Navy Sec Richard Spencer, have used recent public appearances to warn of the debilitating effects a lower budget would have on the department’s priorities as laid out in the 2018 National Defense Strategy (Defense Daily, Dec. 6).
Republican lawmakers have loudly opposed the prospect of a smaller topline and last week multiple House members and senators voiced their disapproval, for some in the form of a letter to Trump co-signed by 70 GOP House members, and for others, such as Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), in an address at the National Defense University, in his first public speech since taking the gavel of Senate Armed Services Committee chairman.