The return of budget caps and the potential for automatic across-the-board spending cuts through 2021 pose the No. 1 defense fiscal challenge for the the next president and defense secretary, according to Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord. “There is no deal on the books, so you are starting with a clean sheet of paper” that “overshadows their whole first term,” McCord said in an interview. Cuts in defense and domestic spending that would be imposed through a process called sequestration have been eased by stopgap deals in Congress, including a two-year relaxation of budget caps under Public Law 114-74 for the current year and for fiscal 2017, which begins Oct. 1. After that, McCord...
