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Statement of Matthew S. Goldberg, Acting Assistant Director, Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Over the past seven years, the CBO has published a series of reports about its projections of the resources that could be required over the long term (typically two decades) to carry out the nation’s defense plans. Those projections differ from CBO’s baseline, under which discretionary defense spending grows at the rate of inflation without reference to the Dept. of Defense’s (DoD) plans. This testimony, the latest installment in CBO’s analyses of DoD’s budget requests, concerns CBO’s preliminary projections for FY 2011 through 2028. Those projections are based in part on the President’s 2010 budget request and budget justification materials the Admin. provided to the Congress with that request. Among the other sources CBO consulted to supplement its analysis were DoD press releases and briefing materials and the Secretary of Defense’s announcement in April 2009 of changes to the nation’s defense plans. For its analyses of past budget requests, CBO has drawn from information in DoD’s Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), which typically is submitted to the Congress with the President’s annual budget request. This year, however, the Admin. did not submit a FYDP, which would have covered the years 2011 through 2015. CBO projects that carrying out the plans proposed in the President’s 2010 budget request excluding overseas contingency operations (in general, overseas military operations against hostile forces — currently consisting of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and military actions elsewhere to combat terrorism) would require defense resources averaging $567 billion annually (in constant 2010 dollars) from 2011 to 2028. That amount is about 6% more than the $534 billion in total obligational authority (TOA) requested by the Admin. in its regular 2010 budget, again excluding overseas contingency operations. The long-term demand for defense resources could be larger than CBO’s base projections. CBO has developed a scenario under which, consistent with the Status of Forces Agreement signed by the govts. of Iraq and the U.S. in Nov. 2008, all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011. The total number of U.S. military personnel deployed worldwide would decline to 30,000 starting in FY 2013, although those troops would be in unspecified locations and not necessarily in Iraq or Afghanistan. CBO estimates that supporting that number of deployed service members would require recurring annual appropriations of about $20 billion in 2010 dollars. CBO refers to those costs as “contingency unbudgeted costs.” Other factors also could increase defense resources above CBO’s base projections. Tables.
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