Air Force civilian, military personnel advocate passage of ‘on-time’ budget

Air Force civilian and military personnel recently expressed to lawmakers the importance of passing a timely budget to ensure Air and Space Force modernization efforts are not delayed.

Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman participated in a House of Representatives Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing regarding the modernization process.

“The Department of the Air Force needs timely authorizations and appropriations,” Kendall said. “The (Department of the Air Force) is ready to move forward with the next generation of capabilities we need, and there is no time to lose.”

The hearing served as an initial step in a lengthy process yielding a new department spending plan. As designed, the process is expected to finish by Oct. 1, when the new fiscal year begins.

Complexities in policy and political disagreements have resulted in the deadline often being missed in recent years, forcing Congress to enact temporary, short-term budgets known as continuing resolutions or CRs.

Kendall, Brown, and Saltzman expressed that a CR maintains spending at levels from the previous year’s budget but prohibits spending on new or substantially revised programs and projects, which could prove problematic.

“An on-time budget will continue the change required to address both today’s and tomorrow’s national security threats,” Brown said to lawmakers. “We must fulfill our sacred duty of providing our Airmen with the tools they need to be successful.”

The department’s budget request is $215.1 billion.

“This budget request is designed to deliver the forces, personnel, and partnerships the Space Force requires to preserve U.S. advantages in space,” Saltzman said in referencing the Space Force’s $30 billion budget target. “But only if the Congress passes timely appropriations.”