By Emelie Rutherford
President Barack Obama’s call yesterday to cut $400 billion in defense spending by 2023 after reassessing the role of the U.S. military has generated skepticism among some Republicans and praise from some Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Obama laid out a plan to save $4 trillion in federal spending to offset the federal budget deficit over 12 years, describing defense cutting as one of four needed steps to achieve that daunting goal. To save the $400 billion in “security” spending, Obama wants to hold the growth in base security spending below inflation, the White House said. The president said during a mid-day speech at George Washington University he will not propose specific defense cuts until after he conducts a comprehensive review of the military’s role with Pentagon leaders.
“Over the last two years, (Defense) Secretary Bob Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending,” Obama said. “I believe we can do that again.”
His speech came as pro-defense lawmakers wrestled with increasing pressure to cut the Pentagon’s budget, at a time when the military’s is involved not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also Libya and Japan.
The Republican-led House prepared yesterday to vote on a spending resolution from the House Budget Committee that calls for increasing the Pentagon budget in real terms in the coming years. Democrats roundly criticized that plan from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), noting the nearly doubling of the base defense budget over the past decade. Observers credit Ryan’s resolution with spurring Obama to unveil yesterday his own deficit-tackling plan.
House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), an outspoken proponent of increasing the defense budget more than currently planned, said yesterday he has “grave concerns about the White House announcing a $400 billion cut to national security spending while our troops are fighting in three different theaters.
“Additionally, assigning a specific number to national security cuts prior to the completion of a comprehensive review of our military’s roles and missions seems to be putting the cart before the horse,” said McKeon, who balked at the concept of holding defense spending below inflation.
Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) similarly said he was hesitant to back Pentagon budget cuts beyond the $178 billion in reductions over the next five years the White House proposed in February.
“I’d have to be shown a need for (Pentagon cuts), not just a blanket statement that we’re going to cut defense,” McCain said Tuesday. “That’s crazy and stupid.”
SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), meanwhile, said he thinks “there should be some reductions in some parts of the defense budget.” Levin said specific cuts should not be “decided in the abstract,” but declined to share with reporters on Tuesday budget-cutting ideas he said he is formulating.
Democrats have assailed the budget resolution from the House Budget Committee for its lack of defense cuts.
“Let’s look for savings in every part of the budget, defense included,” House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday on the House floor. He later praised Obama’s deficit-reducing plan for including defense spending in cost-cutting deliberations.
Obama said during his speech yesterday that just “as we must find more savings in domestic programs, we must do the same in defense.”
The president said he will recommend specific defense cuts after conducting a “fundamental review of America’s missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world” with Gates and the Joint Chiefs. Savings also will come from pushing harder to “eliminate waste and improve efficiency and effectiveness,” he said.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said yesterday Gates “believes the Department of Defense cannot be exempt from efforts to bring federal deficit spending under control.”
“However, it is important that any reduction in funding be shaped by strategy and policy choices and not be a budget math exercise,” Morrell said via e-mail. “The president’s direction gets the sequence right by conducting a comprehensive review first and only then making decisions on specific funding options.”
Gates, he said, “has been clear that further significant defense cuts cannot be accomplished without reducing force structure and military capability.”
“The comprehensive review of missions, capabilities, and America’s role in the world will identify alternatives for the president’s consideration,” Morrell said. “The secretary believes that this process must be about managing risk associated with future threats and national security challenges and identifying missions that the country is willing to have the military forgo.”
Obama said some of the deficit-cutting recommendations he unveiled yesterday come from his biapartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which last year proposed balancing the nation’s budget in five years partly by cutting $100 billion from the Pentagon. Though an interim report spelled out a raft of weapon-system cuts, the commission’s final report did not detail Pentagon programs to be eliminated.
The chairs of the commission– Erskine Bowles, chief of staff to previous President Bill Clinton, and Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming–failed to garner enough votes from members to compel Congress to weigh the proposal (Defense Daily, Dec. 6, 2010).
In addition to cutting defense spending, the three other steps Obama wants to take to lower the deficit are controlling domestic spending, reducing federal health care spending, and ending tax cuts for wealthy Americans.
McKeon, for his part, said he has been busy looking for “wasteful” Pentagon spending. He said he and his HASC subcommittee chairmen have already found “billions of dollars” in Pentagon savings that they will call for reinvesting in “higher national security priorities” when they mark up the FY ’12 defense authorization bill next month. McKeon pointed out the HASC already has mandated a comprehensive review of military roles and missions.