Tensions among Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee boiled over on Wednesday, as panel members blamed Pentagon leaders for playing a role in the looming fiscal crisis facing the Defense Department under sequestration.
During Wednesday's hearing, committee Republican Reps. Randy Forbes (Va.) and Rob Bishop (Utah) slammed DOD for its refusal to plan for the massive, across-the-board cuts tied to the White House's sequestration plan.


Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Pentagon Comptroller Bob Hale, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey and the heads of the service branches appeared before the panel, to again plead their case against the automatic budget cuts.
Under the plan, Pentagon coffers are expected to be hit with nearly $500 billion in spending reductions over the next decade.
Forbes asked point-blank whether DOD's decision to not take sequestration into account during its budget planning process was a mistake.

"There's been 560 days since [sequestration] was signed into law as the law of the land . . . [and] just within the last couple of weeks, [is] when we've received the memos from you guys about the impacts that this was going to have," Forbes said.
In September, DOD officials told The Hill that they had not taken sequestration into account when planning for the department's budget proposal for fiscal year 2013, and President Obama has long said that the cuts — which were set in motion by the debt-ceiling deal last year — should not happen.

When asked in September whether department officials had considered drafting two budgets — one reflecting normal Pentagon expenditures and another reflecting the fiscal impact of sequestration — the answer from DOD spokeswoman Lt. Col. Elizabeth Robbins was an emphatic no.
During the same hearing, Bishop made crystal clear that the department's inaction to plan for sequestration made it more difficult for congressional lawmakers to come up with a viable solution.
"You are part of the problem . . . you helped cause this," Bishop angrily told the DOD and military witnesses.