WASHINGTON: The Pentagon budget for next year is dishonest and generals who have endorsed it on Capitol Hill are not giving Congress their "true advice," a senior Republican lawmaker on budget matters said on Thursday amid rising rhetoric over looming defence cuts.
Representative Paul Ryan, head of the budget committee of the House of Representatives, said the defence budget President Barack Obama sent to Congress last month was driven by spending constraints and not by the new US military strategy unveiled in January.
"We don't think the generals are giving us their true advice. We don't think the generals believe that their budget is really the right budget," Ryan told a forum sponsored by the National Journal magazine hours before his own budget plan passed the House.
He said the Pentagon's new US defence strategy calls for a shift to the Pacific, a move that means you need a Navy and Air Force that can extend its reach into those areas.
"This budget doesn't do that. So I think the strategy doesn't match the budget because I think what is going on here is this is a budget-driven strategy not a strategy-driven budget," Ryan said, adding that the spending plan was "not really a true, honest and accurate budget."
Top defence officials who testify before Congress are sworn to give their best military advice and the uniformed and civilian leaders of all four services have testified repeatedly on the budget in recent weeks.
Pentagon Press Secretary George Little, reacting to Ryan's comments, said Defence Secretary Leon Panetta "expects honest, straightforward input from our military leadership and he believes that's precisely what they do on a regular basis, time and time again."
A spokesman for Ryan seemed to backtrack later, saying the congressman "believes the integrity of our generals and admirals is unimpeachable."
The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee told an audience at the Rand corporation think tank he thought the debate over whether the strategy was driven by the budget was "endless and to my mind ridiculous."
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