Boy, that upcoming Strategic Choices and Management Review (or "Scammer," in Pentagon speak) better be good. Because right now, the Pentagon's new FY 2014 budget submission perpetuates the illusion of business as usual.
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The budget request willfully ignores reality in three ways: It treats sequestration and deeper budget decline like the ghost in the closet -- there, but not remembered. It contains a lot of wishful thinking about the hard choices the Pentagon faces, asking Congress for things Congress will not provide. And it projects growth for programs and forces that will not survive in this budget environment.
It is no wonder the mainstream press has generally ignored the defense budget this year. The reality is that DOD's funds are not at the center of public attention. The overall budget is, however, and the president's larger budget request actually takes some steps toward what might, in a parallel world, be a budget deal -- calling for higher tax rates for the rich, alongside Medicare means-testing and the chain-weighted CPI for social security.
Defense budget levels are just collateral damage in this bigger budget fight, as they have been for the last two years. They will be adjusted to fit any overall budget deal or will simply be nibbled away at, year by year over the next decade.
We will look back in 10 years time and realize that we have cut the defense budget more than a trillion dollars from the levels projected in last year's budget. And, by the way, we will still be, as we are today, the toughest kid on the military block, as the rest of the world sees us.
But that would be a realistic perspective. The defense budget request of nearly $527 billion is not. Sequestration is ignored altogether (well, not quite; the defense request includes the $4 billion in cap reductions for FY 2014, agreed to last January). It is, as everyone now knows, $52 billion above the revised budget cap for next year.
It may be good politics: "Look, we Democrats are defending defense and not vulnerable to the Buck McKeon charge that we are gutting security. Now over to you Republicans to one-up us on defense, gut domestic programs, resist putting revenues (even ones you proposed last December) on the table, prevent an agreement, and allow the sequester to happen." You can run on that record in next year's congressional elections, and good luck to you. I am shocked -- shocked! -- to find politics going on in this place.
The reality is that sequestration is happening this year. It is unlikely to be fixed. In fact, the administration is wrong in its calculation that big defense cuts this year will bring the Republicans to the table on the budget. After March 1, it became clear that House Republicans were prepared to live with the $42 billion in FY 2013 defense cuts.
For them -- for everyone, in fact -- the sequester is a kind of a Base Realignment and Closure round for the entire defense budget. Because it is automatic, its brutality and mindlessness can be blamed on a "process," a deus ex machina for which nobody can be held accountable, but which nevertheless lowers the defense budget. Democrats cannot be blamed. And Republicans will capture some much-desired domestic cuts on the way.
Behind closed doors, the services are starting to be more realistic about how achievable those sequestration cuts are this year. The days of "Doomsday" are gone. The furloughs have become a water mirage, disappearing as we drive into the future. The projected number of days civilians will lose between now and September 30 has gone from 22 to 14 to 7 -- and the Navy wants them to go away altogether, making other choices to live with less. And the department is planning to send a big reprogramming request to Congress to help deal with other sequestration impacts.
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