Funding goals meet congressional reality: operating on a temporary budget

And we're back with our defense news reporters, Noah Robertson and Steve Losey, talking about the $1 trillion budget for the Defense Department next year

Or maybe more, maybe less. We'll see. Who knows? Congress hasn't gotten a defense budget approved close to on time since Donald Trump's last presidency

And that was even an outlier because it was just the one year. Right now, the department's working on a modified budget extension of the fiscal 2024 budget

So do we think there's any chance this budget gets passed before, say, I don't know, the Dodgers get bounced out of the playoffs in October

It's a cruel thing to say to a Dodgers fan, though I don't have my hat right now. You had a wonderful time last year

You don't need two World Series in a row. It's fine. We can move beyond the Phillies content that this is obsessing in the show

To get back to the original question, I think the betting markets would be pretty solidly no

We've already seen a late budget rollout from the Pentagon, which has not happened yet

but we're already past the usual March deadline that will happen in May at the earliest

So people are still not sure whether we're going to get an official budget rollout and what it'll look like

And then what that will combine with Congress's own effort at a reconciliation package of extra money for the DOD is also left to question

So I would say no. Yeah. And that's I mean, I don't know when we're going to get that rollout at this point

I mean, the White House has hinted at a bunch of things, but we're just we're so far behind at this point

And even if we get it there is the whole summer of negotiations there a fight And as we said the the rift between Republicans and Democrats is wide and the rift even within the Republican Party is wide So you going to need everyone on the Republican side to agree on something here

probably to get it through Congress, because you're not going to get much Democratic support if you really are hammering the non-defense side

I should say, too, you are operating right now through the administration without many confirmed officials

The comptroller we mentioned earlier, but there are also other several officials in the Defense Department

either who have cycled out recently or who were never in the place to begin with, who are now entering their positions

And these are all crucial spots to helping negotiate these things. So, Steve, talk to me about, because we hear this all the time, we hit these temporary budgets and we hit these CRs and these budget extensions and everything

This is terrible for defense, it's terrible for blame. What does it actually mean when they've got to operate on these

Because there's still a lot of money. There's still, you know, we haven't, if there's a shutdown, it's a different thing

But it's not like, you know, it's one thing to cry poor when you don't have $850 billion

But when that's still rolling in, but you want to build a trillion dollars, what does it actually mean here

So you're right. They're not going door to door begging or anything like that

But a continuing resolution, especially if it went the entire year, that does put the brakes on things that the Pentagon knows it needs to do

It can't start new programs, for example. And because funding would be frozen at the previous year level it means that the Pentagon can buy more things that it knows it needs like perhaps if it wanted to increase the number of munitions or missiles of a particular type it wanted to buy But even beyond that because

inflation is a very real thing right now, because the funding is frozen, it would probably be able

to buy even fewer munitions than it did the previous year because these things are costing

more money. So there's a lot of follow on effects that a continuing resolution has that people don't

always realize. So we're getting into the height of budget season and some of that planning. This

is when traditionally on Capitol Hill, we've got all of the service chiefs and the various

representatives from the military coming up and talking on behalf of the budget ask. And we've

seen a little bit of that so far, although they don't have a number to testify on. Do you have a

sense of what they're going to be pitching over the next few months. If they have that number

fine. They always are sort of pitching. Here's why it's the right number. But with the current CR

as you said, with this unusual situation, I mean, is there an extra emphasis from these folks to say

hey, look, we need to get back to budget basics. And we do need this extra money. We know there's

fights. We know there's these fiscal things, these fiscal disagreements. But we've got to have some

stability and we got to have some long planning for the defense market Because we are coming on an administration change that always brings some uncertainty But this feels even less even like less budget stability than we see in a normal changeover cycle

I think we should say, too, budget stability is its own good when you're coming up as a Pentagon planner with what you'll need in the future

You just want to know how much you'll have, even if it might be less than you're otherwise aware of

You might sacrifice total funding for predictability of that funding. I would say in reference to your question, we are going to get a surge in investment in things like drones, autonomy, advanced software, also things like warfighting in the Pacific

The U.S. has already done more advanced deployments of personnel, units, formations, and also some military construction needs out there

Not to mention, by the way, these very ambitious programs such as what the president calls Golden Dome, which is this network of missile defense that he wants to build so that the U.S. is protected from adversaries like China and North Korea

That is going to be a huge investment if they're going to pull it off

And that is not to mention any of the other equipment increases that we can get along the way

So there's no shortage of things that they want to pay for. We just don't know how much they'll have to pay for it

Listen, gentlemen, thank you so much for this. Appreciate your time. Appreciate the wisdom here

and I think we've got a lot of budget stuff to see in coming months

So if you'd like more of our coverage on these and other topics, you can find all of our work at militarytimes.com and defencedews.com

or on any of our social media channels. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next week