The Obama administration will move toward forcing all non-warfighting related defense spending under the regular, congressionally authorized lawmaking process in the coming years.

White House officials told reporters Feb. 26 that President Barack Obama's military budget also will revolve around former President George W. Bush's goal of increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 active troops, as well as Obama's call for improving medical treatment of the wounded and reforming the Pentagon's acquisition processes.

"He wants to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps, improve the pay for our men and women in uniform, and improve the medical treatment of wounded service members," according to an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statement. "At the same time, the president will pursue a reform of the acquisition process to make sure that funds are not being wasted on expensive and outdated weapon systems."

Obama is proposing that the Defense Department receive $533.7 billion as a baseline budget for fiscal 2010, with another $130 billion in supplemental funding to bring the total to almost $664 billion.

The proposal for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 would compare with about $655 billion enacted and proposed for FY '09 -- a 1.4 percent year-over-year increase -- once another Obama proposal for $75.5 billion for a second, FY '09 supplemental is included. (Those figures do not include roughly $7 billion in personnel, health care and military construction spending recently appropriated under the economic stimulus law.)

Official details over budgets for the armed services and their programs will have to wait until the full request is sent to Congress in April, the White House reiterated. Meanwhile, the second FY '09 supplemental bill should be unveiled in coming weeks. OMB Director Peter Orszag further said the White House will include "placeholder" estimates of $50 billion per year for 2011 and beyond; another official noted that those requests will entail only war-related expenses, not long-term modernization funds.

Regardless, the Obama administration has increasingly let it be known since its November 2008 election victory that national security spending as it stands now is not immune to the economic crises.

"The administration will set realistic requirements and stick to them and incorporate 'best practices' by not allowing programs to proceed from one stage of the acquisition cycle to the next until they have achieved the maturity to clearly lower the risk of cost growth and schedule slippage," OMB said.

Congressional reaction from Democratic leaders there was supportive. "While we will closely examine the president's full budget proposal when it becomes available in the coming weeks, at first look I believe the $533.7 billion requested for defense is a reasonable level which will allow us to provide the resources needed to support our troops and keep America safe," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) said.

Regarding intelligence budgeting, the new administration did not disclose a top-line figure, saying the budget is classified and the government "does not publicly disclose funding requests for intelligence activities." But OMB said the budget request will include "substantial" funding for cybersecurity efforts, as well as provide funding to "improve mission performance by increasing intelligence collection capabilities and continuing to transform intelligence analysis" in the intelligence community.

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