Sec. 1003. Sense of Senate on sequestration
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The Senate makes the following findings: The budget of the President for fiscal year 2015, as submitted to Congress pursuant to section 1105 of title 31, United States Code, provides for significant reductions to the military force structure and in military compensation over the course of the future-years defense program, including proposals to restrict pay raises for members of the Armed Forces below the rate of inflation, freeze pay for general and flag officers, reduce the growth of housing allowances by requiring members of the Armed Forces to pay 5 percent out-of-pocket for housing costs, reduce appropriated fund subsidies to the defense commissaries, make significant changes to benefits under the TRICARE program, reduce the end strength of the Army by more than 60,000, retire the A–10 and U–2 aircraft of the Air Force, inactivate half of the cruiser fleet of the Navy, and reduce the size of the helicopter fleet of the Army by 25 percent and terminate the Ground Combat Vehicle program of the Army.
These proposed reductions are the result of the budget caps enacted by Congress in the Budget Control Act of 2011 and reaffirmed (with some relief for fiscal years 2014 and 2015) in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2014, which cut more than $900,000,000,000 from the planned Department of Defense budget over a period of ten years. Under these budget caps, the Department of Defense budget is unchanged from the funding level in fiscal years 2013 and 2014, and remains more than $30,000,000,000 below the funding provided to the Department in fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012.
In inflation-adjusted terms, the drop is even greater, with a reduction of $75,000,000,000 since fiscal year 2010 and virtually no projected growth in inflation-adjusted dollars through the balance of the future-years defense program. If the budget caps remain unchanged for fiscal year 2016 and beyond, the Department of Defense will be required to make even deeper cuts, including an additional reduction of 60,000 in the end strength of the Army, the retirement of the entire KC–10 tanker aircraft fleet and the Global Hawk Block 40 fleet, reduced purchases of Joint Strike Fighters and unmanned aerial vehicles, the inactivation of additional naval vessels, reduced purchases of destroyers, and the elimination of an aircraft carrier and a carrier air wing.
Senior civilian and military leaders of the Department of Defense have testified that if these additional reductions are carried out, the United States Armed Forces will not be able to carry out the National Defense Strategy. The budget of the President for fiscal year 2015 proposes to add $115,000,000,000 to the budget caps of the Department of Defense for the four fiscal years starting in fiscal year 2016 in order to avoid the need to make the additional cuts described in paragraph (3).
The budget proposes to add an equal amount to the budget caps for the non-defense agencies of the Federal Government in order to ensure that such agencies can continue to meet their obligation to protect and promote public safety, health, education, justice, transportation, the environment, and other domestic needs. It is the sense of the Senate that— leaving the budget caps described in subsection (a)(2) for fiscal year 2016 and beyond unchanged would require cuts that would seriously undermine the ability of the Department of Defense to carry out its national security mission and reduce the ability of other Federal Government agencies to adequately address non-defense priorities; and Congress should avoid these adverse impacts to the national interests of the United States by enacting deficit-neutral legislation to increase the budget caps, offset by a bipartisan comprehensive package.