The Pentagon plans to unveil tomorrow findings of a months-long strategic review intended to identify $450 billion-plus in longterm budget cuts.
The announcement, expected during a press conference with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, comes shortly after Congress and President Barack Obama approved the two fiscal year 2012 defense budget bills during the waning days of 2011.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters yesterday the soon-to-be-unveiled Pentagon plan recognizes “the strategy comes first, and the reductions…are driven by the strategy.”
“They’re not across the board, they’re not random,” he told reporters at the White House.
The review is intended to identify the roughly $489 billion dip to the Pentagon’s 10-year spending plans already mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which Obama signed in August. That cut is expected to translate into a $260 billion reduction to the Pentagon’s five-year budget proposal, which Panetta will send to Congress next month.
Obama has been “deeply involved” and “personally engaged” in helping craft the review, meeting with officials including Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey six times since September, Carney said yesterday at the White House. In December, he said, Obama “took the unprecedented step” of bringing all of the combatant commanders to the White House for consultations.
The president “made clear to his team that we need to take a hard look at all of our defense spending to ensure that spending cuts are surgical and that our top priorities are met,” Carney said.
The White House spokesman noted that the cuts determined thus far by the Budget Control Act were agreed to on a “bipartisan basis.”
Yet further Pentagon cuts that could come because of the law are being vehemently disputed by Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Before the December congressional recess, Republicans in the House and Senate held separate press conferences to discuss legislation they plan to introduce to thwart additional cuts (Defense Daily, Dec. 15, 2011).
The Budget Control Act says if the now-defunct Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction could not craft a plan to cut at least $1.2 trillion in federal spending over 10 years by Nov. 23 that passed Congress by Dec. 23, a sequestration mechanism would automatically trigger $1.2 trillion in cuts in January 2013, with half coming from the Pentagon. The committee failed to craft a plan, and hawkish Republicans are balking at the added defense cuts of up to $600 billion that would be on top of the initial $450 billion-plus.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said he will join with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and a group of Senate Armed Service Committee members in introducing legislation after the recess. He called for replacing the $600 billion in sequestration cuts to defense with savings already identified by the super committee, on which he sat, and by other officials who examined ways to shrink the federal deficit.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) also unveiled legislation last month that would reduce the federal workforce to fund a one-year reprieve from the $1.2 billion in sequestration cuts.
Obama said on Nov. 21, the day the super committee announced defeat, that he would “veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending.” He said he wanted congressional Democrats and Republicans to agree on a large-scale deficit-cutting plan, and his administration has maintained he opposes the sequestration cuts.
Administration officials have said those $1.2 billion in sequestration cuts won’t be reflected in the fiscal year 2013 budget they will send to lawmakers next month.
“We firmly believe that Congress should fulfill the responsibility…it took upon itself as a result of the Budget Control Act, and take actions necessary to ensure that the sequester never happens,” Carney said yesterday. “The sequester was designed to be onerous, so that it never took place, (so) that it was an alternative that neither party preferred, and therefore compelled both parties to compromise in finding a broader, balanced approach to deficit reduction.”
Meanwhile, Congress and the White House wrapped up work on the FY ’12 defense authorization and appropriations bills before the new year began.
Obama signed the policy-setting authorization measure on Dec. 31, though he issued a so-called signing statement expressing qualms with provisions in it related to military detainees and sanctions on Iran. The Senate granted final approval to that authorization legislation on Dec. 15. Two weeks earlier, on Dec. 17, Obama signed a massive FY ’12 government-funding bill into law that contains the budget-setting defense appropriations legislation.
The two defense bills contain similar funding for many weapon systems. Those include the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, with both pieces of legislation calling for cutting one aircraft, and the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) effort, a once-disputed program the bills will keep alive (Defense Daily, Dec. 16, 2011).