Military Spending
Here are two easy-and-quick-to-read pieces on the magnitude of the military spending changes Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta actually announced last week. The simple answer according to two people who know is that the reductions are less than the headlines indicated.
First, over at the Will and the Wallet, CG&G alum Gordon Adams did this very nice post about how what Panetta announced is "promising" in the sense that it shows there is finally the start of a meaningful shift in DOD strategy that could lead to significant savings. But Gordon says the proposal is also "dangerous" because the plans leaves "the long term budget trajectory...unrealistically high" and will leave Pentagon planners with the notion that they'll have more to spend in the future than will be the case.
This quote from House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) stands out in an excellent story in yesterday's The Washington Post by Scott Wilson and Greg Jaffe on how the White House worked with the Pentagon on the military spending strategy Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced last week:
“an honest and valid strategy for national defense can’t be founded on the premise that we must do more with less or less with less.”
Yes, I know this is just the chairman of an authorization committee defending his jurisdiction. And, yes, I know that McKeon is from a state that relies heavily on federal military spending.
But "do more with less" and a smaller government supposedly are basic principles of the GOP these days. What is McKeon saying?
My column from today's Roll Call explains how and why Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was saying two things last week: that spending cuts at the Pentagon are coming and that spending cuts at the Pentagon will be limited.
Gates to Pentagon: Prepare for Budget Pain
May 11, 2010
Most of the attention last week may have been paid to the gyrations in the stock market, the debate on Wall Street reform in the Senate, the continuing efforts to clean up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the election in the U.K., and the continuing competition between “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” to be the most-watched program.
My Roll Call column this week explains why the refusal of even some of the members of Congress who call themselves deficit hawks might have been infuriating but wasn't at all suprising.
The Real Story About Pentagon Spending and the Federal Budget
Dec. 8, 2009
It didn’t get the name until two years later, but what we know today as the Defense Department was created in 1947. Although the Navy was part of the new department from the beginning, lifers and veterans of that branch have often told me that they almost never think of themselves as being or having been part of the DOD. This included my late father-in-law, who, when the talk turned to politics after Thanksgiving dinner, would routinely rail against the Pentagon and go to great lengths to explain why the Navy was, is and should be separate from the rest of the military.
Two articles on funding additional troops in Afghanistan, both of which were published yesterday, raise some of the most interesting and tricky federal budget-related issues of the year.
The first, from the Los Angeles Times, points out that the cost of sending additional troops to Afghanistan will be significant: somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million PER PERSON. In other words, the 40,000 additional troops being discussed would cost $40 billion a year.
The second, from one of the blogs at The Hill, explains how House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-WI) has let the White House know he's seriously thinking about proposing a tax equal to the additional cost of whatever the president ultimately decides to do.
