![]() Here is an important point that often goes overlooked. ![]() In essence, the Chief of Staff will not be around to be held accountable for any of the budget decisions he has made. The horse trading happens about two-and-a-half years before the appropriation, which authorizes obligations and expenditures that will occur years later. The decision maker relies on bits and pieces of information which filter through several layers of bureaucracy. ![]() Horse trading at the highest level sounds good - the Chief of Staff has a “birds eye” view of the Army portfolio to make such tradeoffs. There’s always a slew of “unfunded requirements” where goodies can be handed out. Programs that don’t do enough justification will be targets by those in the Army, OSD, and Congress - they will take funding away and provide it to programs which justified themselves better to those echelons. Roth on the defense budget called “ No mysteries, please.” Read the whole thing. That was from an excellent article by Margaret C. And so the horse-trading is done by him,” said Passero, who shepherds the budgeting and executes spending for combat systems and Soldier equipment through the program objective memorandum cycle. “Now you’ve got the deep dives by the chief of staff of the Army. With the passage of the legislation, Milley reinvigorated the approval process with the direct involvement of his office and the vice chief’s. Previously, the chief of staff delegated the verification of requirements to the deputy chief of staff, G-3 (operations and plans). The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 brought about a major shift in how these trades take place. The program objective memorandum is the primary document on which the services base decisions on program scope and spending, with supporting information on missions, objectives and alternatives. Contrary to what one might expect from the budget process, most of the actual horse-trading happens at a higher level inside the Pentagon during a separate but related process to develop the five-year program objective memorandum, well before the Army’s budget request goes to Congress.
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