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 "We are in an extraordinarily rare position in American history
where are our budgets are coming down but our missions are going
up,” McHugh said while speaking with reporters at the annual
conference of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) in
Washington.
Speaking earlier in the day at the opening ceremony of the
conference, McHugh said the Army budget had fallen from a peak of
$144 billion to a current level of $120 billion. He added that
budget uncertainty was adding to the problem.
 While a government shutdown was recently avoided, a continuing
resolution only extends federal spending through Dec. 11. The Senate
recently passed a $612 billion defense policy bill, but President
Barack Obama has vowed to veto the bill because it seeks to avoid
budget caps by padding the war-funding account.
This is not the first time concerns have been raised about a
decreasing budget, but the language suggests an increasing
uneasiness.
“And the problem we have been most troubled by is not the challenges
we saw. ... It’s the ones we didn't see, we didn't budget for, we
didn't plan for,” McHugh told reporters.
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McHugh said a number of current threats had not been foreseen,
including the “rapid pace of expansion of terrorist cells” such as
Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and the Lord’s Resistance Army.
“We really didn't plan for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's,
what I'll call adventurism, in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, causing
major security disruptions throughout much of Europe and certainty
all of eastern Europe,” he added.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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