D.L. Komyagin. The Expenses for the National Defense in the Budgets of the Russian Federation System in the light of the Court Practice

Abstract: In the article the content of the expense liabilities in the field of the national defense is described in detail. The list of indicated expense liabilities is prepared with the help of the analysis of normative acts, regulating the relations in the field of defense. The contradiction, which exists between the budgetary legislation and the court practice in the field of interbudgetary relations, is shown. According to the budgetary legislation the expense liabilities of one budgetary system level can not be passed for execution to the budget of the other level; it reflected in the principle of budget independence. Differentiation of the expense liabilities means that the Russian Federation is not responsible for the expense liabilities of the Russian Federation subjects and vice versa – the Federation subjects and municipal formations are not responsible for the Russian Federation liabilities. Under such approach it is taken as a dogma that the expenses for the national defense should be financed exclusively from the federal budget. Completely another construction was realized in the budgetary scheme of the USSR, which was characterized by the high level of centralization and stability. The USSR budget system was combined by the state budget, through which expenditures and revenues were redistributed; the budgetary system in whole was balanced. There was no need of either expense liabilities division, or, all the more, the development of the interbudgetary relations complex conception and budgetary federalism. According to the specialists, today the unitarism tendency in Russian budgetary system development exists too, in the form of reaction to the negative consequences of independent budgets. The unity and mutual budget responsibility are used abroad, for example, in the Federative Republic of Germany, where the principles of harmonization and subsidiary responsibility in the budget system are used. The practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation acts on the premise that the Russian Federation budgets or municipal formations are the part of the Russian Federation financial system together with the federal budget, that means the responsibility to allot the financial aid from the federal budget in case of insufficient revenues of subordinate budgets to provide their expense liabilities. This position is consequently formulated in the whole range of resolutions of the highest judiciary authority of the country. In the article the author’s thesis is substantiated that expenses for the national defense, as especially important expenses, providing the realization of the defense state function, can be covered at the expense of all the budgets of Russian Federation budgetary system. Its suitability is supported by the wide range of different expenses for the national defense, including some “non-military expenses” such as accommodation assignment. Using all the resources of all the budgets of the Russian Federation budgetary system might allow meeting the challenges of the defense more effectively.

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