WASHINGTON — The White House’s selection for the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said today he supports a number of changes to the Pentagon’s budgeting process put forward by a 2024 congressional commission.
“The [commission’s] report comes up with a lot of very common sense recommendations,” Gen. Christopher Mahoney, who is currently the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He cited the need to have greater flexibility in executing available funds for operations and maintenance as one example. “Flexibility to bring them across fiscal years, to two or three years would help.”
The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Reform, led by former Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale and former DoD acquisition executive Ellen Lord, published its report in 2024, with 28 recommendations “critical to reforming Department of Defense (DoD) resourcing processes to meet the demands of the current security environment.”
In addition to greater flexibility with operational or maintenance funds, Mahoney also brought up recommended “protections” against continuing resolutions so that the Pentagon is less dependent on annual “anomalies” — circumstantial exemptions made by Congress each year to allow for spending outside the bounds of a continuing resolution — to complete its modernization efforts.
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“One more that comes to mind … is flexibility with the threshold amounts for reprogramming,” he said. “In other words, being able to take larger amounts and move them across budget activities or move them across accounts so that we spend them the way the taxpayers meant it to be spent.”
Mahoney’s remarks carry special weight because one of the vice chairman’s primary responsibilities is to work with the deputy secretary of defense to craft and compile the Defense Department’s annual budget request. As vice chair, Mahoney would also lead the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, a panel with broad authority over the Pentagon’s most expensive and important acquisition programs.
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One such program, which has attracted increasing amounts of DoD and congressional attention as of late, is the Navy’s sixth-generation fighter jet, also dubbed F/A-XX. The program has reportedly been at the center of a major dispute between various corners of Congress, the White House and the Pentagon, leading to speculation as to whether the Navy will down-select to a single prime contractor.
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Asked about the plane’s importance today, Mahoney said, “I think what we have to do is keep our eye on the capabilities that we need. We need longer range, deeper penetration and better sensors. To the extent that F/A-XX would fill that void, we need to look at that very closely.”
The general appeared poised for an easy confirmation by the end of the hearing with a number of senators stating they will vote in his favor.