Chairman Mullen

Secretary Panetta was on point yesterday when he warned against a sequester of defense funding beyond the first tranche of budget disciplne in the new debt agreement. 

But the point he was making is important.  What is not desirable is a sequester - a blunt, across-the-board reduction in agency budgets.  It is about the worst way to cut a budget I know, for it is not driven by planning and choice-making, just mechanics.

What is likely, however, is a deeper reduction in defense budgets than the $400 billion or so over the next decade currently in the debt agreement plan and being implemented by the Pentagon.  That's easy - we could provide DOD with inflation growth over the next ten years and the savings from the current Pentagon budget appetite would be more than $400 billion.