The Biden administration is expected to release its first budget request for FY 2022 in May. While the request was developed predominantly under the previous administration, it will provide some direction as to the national security priorities of the new administration.
The Biden administration will shape its defense plans in the midst of the ongoing Covid-19 threat and historically large federal deficits. Seamus Daniels explores the budget landscape and potential priorities for the new Defense Department leadership.
The Trump administration is expected to release its FY 2021 defense budget request on February 10, 2020, the final budget submitted in the BCA era. In this brief, experts from the CSIS International Security Program outline major issues to watch in the FY 2021 defense budget.
The Trump administration characterized its FY 2020 defense budget request as a “masterpiece.” The CSIS Defense Budget Analysis program provides its assessment of the budget, its implications for future defense spending, and FY 2020 appropriations.
On August 2, 2019, President Trump signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, raising the budget caps for FY 2020 and FY 2021 and suspending the debt ceiling. Seamus Daniels and Todd Harrison assess the impact of the budget deal on defense in their latest analysis.
The new budget deal adds $1.6 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years, a bill the current generation has no intention of paying and which it happily sends to its children and grandchildren.
Congress will likely pursue a budget agreement that raises the Budget Control Act spending limits from their original levels for FY 2020. If they fail, the Department of Defense faces sequestration for the first time since 2013.
The Trump administration is not requesting that Congress raise the budget caps at all, either for defense or non-defense. Instead, the administration is asking Congress to use a loophole in the law to allow for higher defense spending without breaching the budget caps: overseas contingency operations (OCO) funding.
The OCO budget has been taken advantage of to skirt defense spending limits and to fund base budget activities that do not actually constitute war funding. However, moving all of OCO’s enduring costs into the base budget for the final two years of the Budget Control Act caps may not be politically expedient for passing a budget agreement for FY 2020 and FY 2021.