Week ahead: Congress dives into defense budget

The congressional defense committees will dive into a dizzying budget schedule next week on Capitol Hill.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey will testify Thursday before the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee.

{mosads}Pentagon leaders have defended cuts in their $496 billion 2015 budget and warned more are on the way unless Congress provides funding above the sequester caps beginning in 2016.

The budget includes cuts to the Army’s end strength, reductions to military benefits, a request for more base closures and the retirement of weapons programs.

In addition to Hagel and Dempsey, Secretary of State John Kerry will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday and the House Foreign Affairs panel on Thursday.

Both Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will be on Capitol Hill Wednesday and Thursday to talk about their departments’ budgets.

The House Armed Services Committees will have the civilian and military heads of the Navy and Marine Corps before the committee on Wednesday, and the heads of the Air Force testifying on Friday.

Gen. Keith Alexander, the outgoing chief of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, will discuss cyber operations with the Armed Services panel on Wednesday — and will likely get NSA questions as well.

Vice Adm. Michael Rogers, who has been nominated to replace Alexander at Cyber Command and the NSA, will be testifying the day before in the Senate Armed Services panel at his confirmation hearing.

The hearing schedule is packed with many other topics, too.

The House and Senate Armed Services panels will hear from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan this week.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of the International Security Assistance Force, will visit the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday and the House Armed Services panel on Thursday.

U.S. plans in Afghanistan remain in limbo as President Hamid Karzai refuses to sign a bilateral security agreement with the United States.

The Obama administration has warned that it will withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2014 if the agreement is not signed, and President Obama has instructed the military to begin preparing for such a withdrawal.

For the 2015 budget, the Pentagon included a $79.4 billion placeholder for war funding, which is says will have to do until the situation there becomes more clear.

The Senate Armed Services panel will hold hearings on U.S. special operations on Tuesday, military space programs on Wednesday and the Southern and Northern Commands on Thursday.

The House Armed Services panel holds a hearing on special ops on Thursday, while the House Appropriations Defense subpanel will examine base closures and installations on Tuesday, the Coast Guard on Wednesday and U.S. Central Command on Friday.

And the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee will hold a hearing on defense health programs on Wednesday.