Barack Obama was elected to a second term as president Tuesday during an election when voters ousted some military policymakers in Congress.

Obama said the United States is “defended by the strongest military on Earth” during his acceptance speech in Chicago early Wednesday morning, when he also called for addressing the federal deficit.

The Democratic president’s triumph over Republican challenger Mitt Romney will immediately shape the near-term debate in Washington over defense budget cuts.

Obama, like Romney, opposes the $1.2 trillion in so-called sequestration cuts to defense and non-defense spending–a time-sensitive issue Congress could address as soon as it reconvenes next Tuesday.

Obama has called on Congress to send him a plan to stop sequestration from starting in January, saying Democrats need to agree to more spending cuts and Republicans should allow revenues in an alternate plan to reduce the federal deficit. Yet he has vowed to veto a legislative replacement plan this is not balanced, in his view, by including new revenues such as taxes.

Romney vowed to stop the sequestration cuts, which would slice $500 billion from planned defense spending over the next decade. He went further and said he opposes the $487 billion in cuts already made to longterm Pentagon budgets by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Obama has stood by those initial $487 billion in reductions, saying the military supports them.

Romney advocated a military buildup including a boost in Navy shipbuilding from nine to 15 ships per year. Yet when the former Massachusetts governor called for maintaining defense spending at 4 percent of the gross domestic product, Obama supporters questioned where he would find $2 trillion to sustain that level of funding in future years.

The future and role of Pentagon weapons programs were debated during the presidential race.

Obama mocked Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, for emphasizing during an Oct. 22 debate that the Navy’s fleet is smaller now than in 1917.

“Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed,” Obama said at the time. “We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

Obama said he and Pentagon leaders do not play “a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships.”

Vice President Joe Biden charged on Oct. 11 that the Army does not need more M1 tanks–referring to a controversial Obama administration proposal to temporarily halt the vehicles’ production line–when arguing military leaders support the $487 billion in spending reductions already planned.

Obama unveiled a new defense strategy at the Pentagon last January following a comprehensive military examination intended to identify the $487 billion in reductions. The strategy calls for strengthening the U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific region, shrinking the size of conventional ground forces, and cutting so-called Cold War-era weapon systems.

Meanwhile, voters ensured Tuesday that Democrats will retain control of the Senate and Republicans will keep a majority in the House.

However, some incumbent military policy makers will not return to Congress next year.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) was unseated by Democrat Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor. Brown, who was elected to the seat in a 2010 special election, currently serves as ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Airland subcommittee. Thus, that panel that oversees military aircraft program–including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter–will have new leadership next year. Its chairman, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I/D-Conn.), is retiring from Congress.

And in the House, 10-term congressman Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) conceded last night to his Democratic challenger, businessman John Delaney. Bartlett is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee.

Some defense-minded lawmakers won close reelection bids. Pentagon-contracting watchdog Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), chairwoman of the SASC’s Readiness and Management Support subcommittee, beat challenger Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.).

Akin, who stirred a national controversy over comments on rape, currently is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee. He will not return to the House.

Other departing House members include the retiring Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee and its defense subcommittee.

Multiple senators who regularly delve into Pentagon budgeting and weapon-systems debates also are due to retire in January, including Lieberman and Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Jim Webb (D-Va.), Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), and Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii). 

Nelson and Webb chair SASC subcommittees. That committee is likely poised to receive a new Republican leader as well, with Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) facing a term limit in that spot.