Robert Gates
As the defense budget creeps toward the table in budget discussions on the Hill, we are likely to be treated to more and more of a contest over cuts, savings, baselines, budget projections, and the like. There is no more fun, or frustrating game, than trying to peel away the numbers we get from DOD and get to a transparent reality of what is really going on.
(originally posted on The Will and the Wallet
For thirty-five years, the Egyptian people believed the myth and lived in fear, fear of the security forces and fear of the chaos and instability that might exist without a strong ruler. They have just overcome that fear and created hope. That collective psychic shift was the key to making the change they needed to bring about.
Some people, like Ezra Klein, think the taxes/unemployment agreement pending before the Congress this week amply demonstrates that "no one [including the Congress] really cares about the deficit," since the package will add roughly $900 billion to the deficit over the next couple of years. Maybe some people are right. Members of Congress have rarely been reluctant to push a pet spending rock when the opportunity presented itself and this agreement is expensive.
But this was a peculiar kind of opportunity – the last gasp of an outgoing Congress. Easy to blame them, when next year rolls around. But when the posturing stops this week and the last Congress slinks out of town, the last month will have been memorable for the way it changed the atmosphere around deficits, particularly with respect to defense.
As the debate over defense begins to heat up, and it is heating up, the facts are getting muddled. Seems like people don't know what Bob Gates is and is not doing. For example, John Guardiano on Frumforum today asserts that Obama and the Democrats have cut $330 billion from defense already and are determined to "gut defense," in cooperation with Rep. Ron Paul. And Doug Schoen in the Wall Street Journal yesterday "Gates has already voiced his support for significant cuts in defense spending," and Obama should join up with him.
Check them both out, but keep your salt shaker handy.
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.
