| 摘要 | THE ISSUE
In FY 2020, the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 spending limits return to their original level for both defense and non-defense at $576 billion and $543 billion, respectively. In its FY 2020 budget released in March, the Trump administration requested a total of
$750 billion for national defense (050), designating the $174 billion above the cap as Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) or emergency funding and thus exempt from the spending limits. While the administration’s budget request does not breach the BCA caps, Congress is not likely to consider it a viable option and will seek to negotiate a budget agreement which increases both the defense and non-defense spending caps. If both political parties and the White House fail to reach a deal by 15 days after the current Congressional session adjourns and appropriations for FY 2020 exceed the caps, sequestration—the automatic process of imposing across-the-board budget cuts—would be triggered for the first time since 2013. This brief estimates the fiscal impact of sequestration on funding for the Department of Defense (DoD) in FY 2020.
HOW WOULD SEQUESTRATION BE TRIGGERED IN FY 2020?
$647B -
$576B = $71B
WHAT WOULD BE THE IMPACT OF SEQUESTRATION ON DOD IN FY 2020?
The most likely scenario in which sequestration is triggered in FY 2020 would be under a continuing resolution (CR) that is still in effect by the expected January 18 deadline.
Based on the data in Table 1, defense funding accounts would be subject to an 11 percent cut distributed across each title (besides the exempted MILPERS accounts) for a total sequester of $71 billion to all national defense funding (budget function 050). Operations & maintenance (O&M) would account for approximately 46 percent of the estimated $67 billion in cuts to DoD funding. Procurement funding and research, development, test & evaluation (RDT&E) would each make up 33 percent and 17 percent of the sequester cuts, respectively.
Table 1: FY 2020 Sequestration Cuts by Title (discretionary budget authority in current dollars)
The “Other” account includes Family Housing funding and Revolving and Management Funds. There were no Trust Funds reported for FY 2019 according to OMB. For the purpose of this analysis, it is assumed that there are no prior year unobligated funds for budget functions (053) and (054), which along with DoD (051), make up the total national defense function (050). Data derived from Office of Management and Budget, Public Budget Database (Washington, DC: Office of Management and Budget, March 2019) and Department of Defense, Financial Summary Tables: Department of Defense Budget for Fiscal Year 2020 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, April 2019).
HOW WOULD AN FY 2020 SEQUESTER DIFFER FROM THE FY 2013 SEQUESTER?
Since the passage of the BCA in 2011, sequestration has only occurred once, in 2013, following the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction—also known as the “Super Committee”—to propose a viable alternative deficit reduction plan. The sequester, originally set to be implemented on January 2, 2013, was delayed until March 1, 2013 with the passage of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.9 The 2012 law also raised the budget caps for both defense and nondefense for FY 2013 but lowered the caps for FY 2014.10 Table 2 illustrates the impact of the FY 2013 sequester on DoD and its related funding accounts. In total, DoD funding was cut by over $37 billion ($42 billion in FY 2020 dollars) as a result of sequestration. The cuts, however, were not applied at a uniform rate across each of the spending titles due to an exception in the law known as the “crediting provision.” Under this provision, accounts that were reduced in the FY 2013 appropriations bill relative to their FY 2012 baseline were prevented from being reduced by more than the amount required by sequestration.11
Table 2: FY 2013 Sequestration Cuts by Title (discretionary budget authority in current dollars)
Data derived from Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), Department of Defense Report on the Joint Committee Sequestration for Fiscal Year 2013 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, June 2013); The “Other” account includes Family Housing funding, Revolving and Management Funds, and Trust Funds.
In addition to the rate at which the accounts were reduced by the sequester, one of the primary differences between FY 2013 and sequestration in FY 2020 would be the sheer size of the sequester itself. Adjusting for inflation, a $67 billion sequester for the Department in FY 2020 would be approximately 81 percent larger (61 percent larger when adjusted for inflation) than the amount cut in FY 2013.
The cuts would also be concentrated in different areas of the DoD budget. In FY 2013, 55 percent of the sequester impacting DoD was in O&M funding. In FY 2020, however, cuts to O&M accounts would fall to approximately 46 percent. Acquisition’s share (including procurement and RDT&E) of the sequester would grow from 42 percent in FY 2013 to over half (roughly 51 percent) in FY 2020. A sequester in FY 2020 would fall more on procurement and RDT&E than it did in FY 2013 because these accounts make up a larger share of the budget.
CONCLUSION
Among government officials, military leaders, and defense analysts, there is no universal consensus on the degree to which sequestration harmed DoD and prevented the Department from carrying out its mission. Skeptics point to exaggerated statements from officials on the effects of sequestration and the continued misuse of the term to mischaracterize the BCA caps.12 From an execution standpoint, DoD was also able to mitigate some effects of the cuts by using the reprogramming authority given by Congress to transfer funding between accounts.13
If sequestration is triggered in FY 2020, DoD will arguably face more difficult decisions and more painful cuts than in FY 2013.
However, it cannot be denied that the sequester had negative impacts on DoD by forcing it to make cuts and pause some of its activities. As then-DoD comptroller Robert Hale later reflected, the cuts forced the services to halt training, delay deployments, cancel joint international exercises, and stop facility maintenance projects.14 Roughly 640,000 civilian employees of DoD, approximately 85 percent of its workforce, were furloughed and did not recieve back pay.15
National Defense Strategy
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Seamus P. Daniels is a research associate and program manager for Defense Budget Analysis in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. D.C.
This brief is made possible by general support to CSIS. No direct sponsorship contributed to this brief.
CSIS Briefsare produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s). © 2019 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.
APPENDIX: SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY
The data for the FY 2019 funding levels that would be enacted in a continuing resolution for FY 2020 were taken from the FY 2020 OMB budget authority database for FY 2019. The remaining prior year unobligated funds were calculated from the estimates of the unobligated balances for the FY 2019 base and OCO enacted levels found in Section G of the FY 2020 Financial Summary Tables published by the DoD.17 The unobligated balances by title were broken out by funding year. To estimate the remaining prior year unobligated funds at the assumed date of sequestration (January 18, 2020), the balance for each funding year was reduced according to the obligation rate for each spending title as published in the OSD Rule-of-Thumb Obligation Rate benchmarks.18 Although these benchmarks do not provide an entirely accurate estimate for the rate at which funding is obligated, they provide a general expectation for the rate at which funding should be obligated, thereby allowing a forecast for the remaining unobligated balance on January 18. For the purposes of calculating the remaining unobligated balance, it is assumed that any unobligated MILPERS and O&M funding, which have only one year of availability, would have expired by January 18. Shipbuilding funding, despite having a period of availability of five years, was also included and reduced according to the obligation rate for procurement funding, which has a three-year period of availability. Based on these assumptions, the estimate for the remaining prior year unobligated funds should be regarded as somewhat conservative.
CALCULATION OF ESTIMATED PERCENTAGE CUT TO APPLICABLE DOD ACCOUNTS FOR FY 2020 SEQUESTER
U.S. Code 2 § 901(a)(1-2), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ text/2/901. U.S. Code 2 § 904, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/904. U.S. Congress, Senate, “Dates of Sessions of the Congress,” https://www. senate.gov/reference/Sessions/sessionDates.htm#1. For more on the FY 2018 continuing resolution, see Seamus P. Daniels and Todd Harrison, “What the Continuing Resolution Means for Defense Spending in FY 2018,” CSIS Critical Questions, September 27, 2017, https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-continuing-resolution-means-defense-spend- ing-fy-2018. U.S. Code 2 § 905(f)(1), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/905. Ibid. Jeffrey D. Zants, Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget, letter to the Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr., July 31, 2012, https:// obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/letters/ military-personnel-letter-biden.pdf. For more on the methodology, see the appendix. U.S. Congress, House, American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, HR 8, 112th Cong., became Public Law January 2, 2013, https://www.congress.gov/ bill/112th-congress/house-bill/8. Todd Harrison, “What Has the Budget Control Act of 2011 Meant for Defense?” CSIS Critical Questions, August 6, 2016, https://www.csis.org/ analysis/what-has-budget-control-act-2011-meant-defense. For more on the crediting provision and a more detailed account of the effects of the FY 2013 sequestration, see U.S. Code 2 § 903(f)(2)(B) and Todd Harrison, Chaos and Uncertainty: FY2014 Defense Budget and Beyond(Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, October 2013), https://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/Analysis-of-the-FY-2014- Defense-Budget.pdf. Robert Hale, Budgetary Turmoil at the Department of Defense from 2010 to 2014: A personal and professional journey (Washington, DC: Brookings,August 2015), 7, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/ DOD_budgetary_turmoil_final.pdf#page=8; Jeremy Herb, “The sequestration monster myth,” Politico, April 13, 2015, https://www.politico.com/sto- ry/2015/04/sequestration-ash-carter-congress-defense-pentagon-116899. Harrison, Chaos and Uncertainty, 4. Budgetary Turmoil at the Department of Defense, 6. Ibid., 7. Kathleen Hicks, et.al., What to Look for in the FY 2020 Defense Budget Request (Washington, DC: CSIS, January 2019), 3, https://csis-prod.s3.am- azonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/190131_Hicks_2020Defense_lay- out_v2.pdf#page=3. Department of Defense, Financial Summary Tables: Department of De- fense Budget for Fiscal Year 2020 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, April 2019), https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbud-get/fy2020/fy2020_Financial_Summary_Tables.pdf#page=148. The OSD Rule-of-Thumb Obligation Rate benchmarks can be found here: https://www.dau.mil/tools/Lists/DAUTools/Attachments/292/ OSD%20(C)%20Color%20Rule-of-Thumb%20Acq%20Obligation%20 and%20Expenditure%20Rates.pdf. |
