CQ NEWS – DEFENSE
Oct. 25, 2012 – 4:25 p.m.
Panetta Urges Congress to Address Four Leading Pentagon Concerns After Election
By John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff
Defense Secretary
Panetta’s to-do list consists of blocking the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration from taking effect, passing defense authorization and cybersecurity bills, and confirming new commanders for NATO and the Afghanistan theater of operations.
“When Congress returns to town after the election, there’s a great deal of critical work that needs to be done,” Panetta said at the press conference. He was joined by Army Gen.
“This is a full agenda,” Panetta added. “It’s one that requires Democrats and Republicans to work together. And after a tough national election, the American people, I think, will expect both parties to roll up their sleeves, work together to solve the problems facing the nation and to protect our national security.”
Sequestration would start on Jan. 2 and would subtract roughly $55 billion from most Pentagon programs in 2013, the first of nearly $500 billion in reductions compared to previous plans — on top of some $487 billion in cutbacks already proposed in response to the 2011 debt-ceiling law (PL 112-25).
“There are only 70 days until that happens, and Congress is certainly on the clock when it comes to that potential sequestration occurring,” said Panetta, who has decried the adverse effect the additional cuts would have on U.S. military plans and programs.
Panetta’s next priority is a defense authorization bill. The House has passed its version (
Panetta said he would like to get a fiscal 2013 Defense appropriations bill, too, although he sounded resigned that the Pentagon will work for the fiscal year’s first six months on a continuing resolution (PL 112-75). He lamented that operating on a CR has impaired the Pentagon’s ability to write a fiscal 2014 request — a process that is under way and will continue for the next couple of months.
“For me to be able to put a strategy in place, for us to be able to make the kind of strategic choices we need to make, I have to have some stability with regards to where are we going from here,” Panetta said. “And I don’t have that right now, and that frankly — that’s a major concern.”
Third, he said, Congress “really must pass” cybersecurity legislation. In response to a question about an attack earlier this year on computers at Saudi Aramco oil company, he declined to describe the likely source of the attacks and seemed to suggest the answer is classified. But he did stress the peril of such attacks and seemed to imply that a country was behind it. Some U.S. government officials have told reporters Iran is believed to have been behind the attack.
“It’s one of the first we’ve seen that can actually take down and destroy computers,” he said of the Saudi Aramco attack. “That’s a very sophisticated tool. There are only a few countries in the world that have that capability. But it raises tremendous concerns about the potential for the use of that kind of tool when it comes to our power grid, when it comes to our financial systems, when it comes to our government systems.”
Separately, one of the Senate sponsors of a leading cybersecurity bill, Connecticut independent
Fourth on Panetta’s priority list for Congress is Senate confirmation of two four-star generals for new positions: Gen. John R. Allen, now commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, to become NATO’s new supreme allied commander in Europe and chief of U.S. European Command, and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., now the Marine Corps’ assistant commandant, to take over for Allen.
Panetta Urges Congress to Address Four Leading Pentagon Concerns After Election
Panetta said he and Dempsey will ask Allen to provide a recommendation for a follow-on U.S. force in Afghanistan after 2014 and a proposed path for reducing the 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan during 2013 and 2014. The confirmation hearings for Allen and Dunford in the Senate Armed Services Committee this fall are all but certain to delve into those plans.
Niels Lesniewski and Gautham Nagesh contributed to this story.