#Defense

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $549 billion defense bill last week that leaves out many of the savings proposed by military leaders.The bill, for example, would preserve weapons systems the Pentagon has not requested or wants to retire, including…

A new presentation by the Congressional Budget Office showcases the difficult choices lawmakers and military leaders must make over the next several years to comply with lower caps on defense spending.The presentation shows options for downsizing the armed forces, reforming…

The House passed its Fiscal 2015 defense spending bill last week without key reforms that the Pentagon had proposed.The legislation, opposed by the administration, appropriates $490.7 billion for the base military budget. The legislation includes weapons systems the Pentagon has…

The Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account, which funds combat missions abroad, is exempt from discretionary spending caps. As this part of the Pentagon’s budget begins to take shape for the coming year, policymakers must resist the temptation to use the…

House Lawmakers returned to their old habits during a markup of the $570.4 billion defense appropriations bill, protecting expensive weapons projects favored by lawmakers while ignoring many of the cost-saving initiatives the Pentagon proposed in its Fiscal 2015 budget request.Like…

Although Congress has set a general course for reduced military spending in the years ahead, in May lawmakers in both parties again rejected specific cost-saving measures proposed by the administration and the Pentagon.Late in the month, the House approved a…

In a disappointing show of political panic, Congress last week overturned a reasonable reform it passed just last December in future cost-of-living adjustments for military pensions going to working-age beneficiaries. President Obama signed the reversal legislation last weekend.The episode does…

The Senate is moving forward on a troubling bill that would add roughly $6.8 billion to the deficit over the next decade by repealing a modest reform in cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) for working-age military retirees.The legislation, which passed a procedural…