CBO Testimony Procurement Costs to Maintain Today's Military Forces
Abstract
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) steady-state estimates of procurement costs for military equipment and systems. Those estimates appear in CBO's recently released study Budgeting for Defense: Maintaining Today's Forces (September 2000). Before I discuss CBO's estimates, however, I would like to emphasize a few points. A new Administration will be coming into office next year and will begin its term with another Quadrennial Defense Review. The new Congress will be focusing its own review of the new Administration's plans on three key questions: Is the new Administration's national security strategy an appropriate response to likely threats to U.S. security? Will the military forces and modernization programs that the Department of Defense (DoD) plans adequately support that strategy? Will the budget that the Administration proposes be sufficient to maintain those forces and carry out those plans? All three of those questions are appropriate for evaluating the nation's military forces and the funding that is necessary to maintain them, but the testimony I will present today will provide a context for addressing only the last issue. In particular, the testimony will focus on what procuring replacement equipment for today's forces would cost. While that question is important, developing appropriate budgets for defense also depends on addressing the far-reaching questions about threats and strategy and forces.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 21, 2000
- Accession Number
- AD1134760
Entities
People
- Christopher Jehn
Organizations
- Congressional Budget Office