Bipartisan Budget Act a positive step.

• Author: McCord, Mike
• Position: VIEWPOINT

Throughout the course of this year, and indeed for the past several years, the secretary of defense and other senior military and civilian leaders of the Pentagon have called on Congress to come together to address the sequestration problem by repealing or significantly increasing the spending caps contained in the Budget Control Act of 2011, which do not represent a sound policy choice for the nation, but rather were intended as a fallback to force a compromise.

The recent enactment of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 represents a positive step. While this legislation does not give the Department of Defense 100 percent of the resources we and the president sought, it gives us most of what we need and provides some badly needed budget stability and predictability. It does the same for non-defense agencies across the government, such as the Departments of State and Homeland Security, which are vital partners in protecting and promoting our national security. Just as importantly for the nation, it removes the threat of default on U.S. government obligations for the next two years.

More recently, the inclusion of military retirement reform legislation in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 demonstrates that members of the House and Senate from both parties can come together not only to establish a budget framework, but also to resolve complex, substantive issues.

These signs of progress are a tribute to the efforts of a number of people, including the strong leadership of the National Defense Industrial Association, which has been a consistent and forceful advocate for bipartisan compromise and for a solution to sequestration. The department, like the National Defense Industrial Association, welcomes Congress' return to bipartisan problem solving, for we have much to do together. There are challenges and opportunities across the globe and across the spectrum of conflict, to include a newly resurgent and aggressive Russia, our rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region and the strengthening of partnerships there, and the emergence of dangerous new actors like the Islamic State.

Having an agreed budget framework for fiscal years 2016 and 2017 provides us with the predictability we need to make efficient use of taxpayer resources to address the nation's security challenges. That stability is welcomed not only by those of us at the Pentagon, but also by our military personnel and their families, our service leadership who can...