President Bush called Monday for a boost of nearly 5 percent in defense spending next year, to $419.3 billion, making the Defense Department one of the few winners in the budget even though it faces a slowdown in growth after post-Sept. 11, 2001, surges.
The request to speed modernization of the Cold War military, which was sent to Congress in the $2.5 trillion fiscal 2006 federal budget, would boost defense spending by 4.8 percent and is sure to create heated debate among lawmakers.
The request does not include money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress has already appropriated $25 billion for them this year, and the White House is planning to request $80 billion more soon under a separate “supplemental” request.
“As a nation at war, an overriding priority must be to ensure that commanders have the troops and the equipment that they need to prevail in the global struggle against extremism,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a news conference.
‘A healthy increase’
The Air Force would get the biggest slice of the proposed pie, with $127.5 billion, followed by $125.9 billion for the Navy and the Marine Corps, $100 billion for the Army and $66.2 billion for other defense agencies.
A senior defense official called the increase in requested new spending — slightly more than $18 billion — a “healthy” one. “Since 2001, we’re up 41 percent in the defense budget,” the official said.
Still, it is smaller than the 7 percent boost Bush asked for in fiscal 2005.
More than half of the proposed increase would be swallowed by basic spending on operations and maintenance, to keep warplanes, ships and other equipment in the world’s premier military ready for combat. That figure would rise by $10.8 billion in 2006, to $147.8 billion.
The cost of military personnel also would rise, by $4.9 billion, to $108.9 billion, most of that for a 3.1 percent pay raise for the troops.
Rumsfeld and other administration officials say the fight against terrorism sparked by the attacks on the United States in 2001 requires heavy spending to create a high-tech force that is more mobile than America’s ponderous Cold War-era military.
The six-year U.S. defense plan beginning next year also anticipates increases to $443.1 billion in fiscal 2007, $462.4 billion in 2008, $482 billion in 2009, $492.1 billion in 2010 and $502.3 billion in 2011.
The military budget for fiscal 2006, which begins Oct. 1, calls for higher spending for expansion of elite Special Operations forces to fight the U.S. war on terrorism and an additional $2.1 billion for chemical and biological defense.
But the quest to modernize the Army is also forcing the Defense Department to cut spending on U.S. missile defense from $9.1 billion to $7.8 billion next year and slash Navy warship building over the short term while the service develops high-tech surface “stealth” vessels.
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The budget includes $1.9 billion to begin paying for a new round of military base closings. Defense Department recommendations on which bases to close will be presented to an independent commission in May. The Defense Department expects to spend another $5.7 billion on this process in 2007, although at a future point the closings are expected to save billions of dollars.
The plan includes a realignment of Marine Corps forces to create, by 2008, two additional active-duty infantry battalions and other units that specialize in intelligence, reconnaissance and counterterrorism, the Marines announced Monday. They would accomplish this without adding more Marines, by reducing the number of artillery, tank and air defense units.
The budget does not include funds to pay the estimated $286 million it would cost to retroactively increase death payments, known as “gratuities,” to the families of military personnel killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Those payments would rise from $12,420 to $100,000 per family, paid for from a supplemental budget request to be submitted later.
The current defense budget of $400.1 billion also does not cover the high cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That cost is being met this year by $105 billion in supplemental spending requests from the White House and is expected to be followed by further requests next year.
While spending on the Army would decrease slightly next year, to $100 billion, defense officials said the reduction would be made up by funds from the supplemental requests for Iraq and Afghanistan because of unusual Army wartime costs attached to those operations.
The officials denied that the Defense Department was hiding regular military spending costs in the supplemental request for Iraq, even though some of those funds would go to realign new Army brigades in post-Cold War “transformation.”
Despite the overall increase in defense spending requested for next year, the department has actually reduced previously budgeted arms purchases by $6 billion in fiscal 2006 and by nearly $30 billion through 2011.