Troop cuts, 1.7% pay raise highlight DoD budget - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Troop cuts, 1.7% pay raise highlight DoD budget

The Pentagon’s 2013 budget proposal released Monday calls for a 6 percent drop in overall spending, reflecting the end of the war in Iraq, the drawdown in Afghanistan and a delay in purchasing several new weapons systems.

The budget sent to Capitol Hill is likely to change in some ways before it becomes law. It proposes to bring overall Pentagon spending down to $613 billion in fiscal year 2013, down from the $645.7 billion total that Congress approved for 2012.

The Pentagon’s base budget will fall for the first time in more than a decade, slipping less than 1 percent to $525.4 billion from last year’s $530.6 billion.

The bulk of the reduction would hit the budget’s supplemental war funding, formally known as Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCO, which is slated to fall by more than 25 percent, down to $88.5 billion from 2012 level of $115.1 billion.

That reduction in spending reflects the withdrawal of 50,000 troops from Iraq and 10,000 troops from Afghanistan last year, as well as the planned reduction of 22,000 more troops from Afghanistan later this year.

The military personnel budget overall will slip to $149.2 billion, or about 2 percent from the $153 billion in both base budget and supplemental war funding.

Most active-duty troops will not see an immediate impact from those personnel cuts.

The 2013 budget calls for troops to receive a pay raise next year on par with private-sector wage growth — a 1.7 percent pay bump for all troops in 2013. Parity with the private sector would continue in 2014. However, in 2015, the Pentagon plan would have military pay raises dip slightly below private-sector wage growth for the first time since the late 1990s.

Troop cuts will account for a large chunk of the envisioned savings in the personnel account, and all four services will be affected next year:

• The Army’s authorized end strength will drop to 552,100, down 9,900, or almost 2 percent, from the 2012 level of 562,000.

• The Marine Corps will drop to 197,300 troops, down 4,800, or more than 2 percent, from the 2012 level of 202,100.

• The Navy will fall to 322,700, down 3,000 sailors, or less than 1 percent, from the 2012 level of 325,700.

• The Air Force will fall to 328,900 airmen, down 3,900, or more than 1 percent, from the 2012 level of 332,800.

Overall, however, the active-duty force of 1.4 million will remain larger than it was in 2001, when the military had a total of 1.39 million active-duty troops.

Another primary target for cost cutting is the military health system. The budget calls for an abrupt drop in the military health care budget to $48.7 billion, which would be a drop of 8 percent from the $52.8 billion appropriated in 2012.

For years, military officials have complained about soaring health care costs, which nearly tripled since 2001, when the total cost was $19 billion.

To achieve the savings, the Pentagon hopes to make several changes that will impact retirees:

• Increase Tricare enrollment fees for working-age retirees.

• Impose Tricare enrollment fees for the first time on retirees age 65 and older.

• Increase pharmacy co-payments for retirees.

• Change laws to allow for health care fees to increase at the rate of medical inflation.

Proposed changes to the military retirement system were left out of this budget. However, the Pentagon is calling for the creation of a commission that would make recommendations for how to change the longstanding system of 20-year cliff-vesting pensions.

Any changes should not affect today’s troops and would only apply to service members who join in the future, defense officials said.

Pentagon planners carved some savings out of the procurement account, which is slated to drop 10 percent to $108.5 billion, down from $120.6 billion in combined base budget and OCO procurement money in 2012. Those cuts result from slowing previously planned purchases of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a Navy aircraft carrier and several other major weapons systems.