Defense Budget

The planned cuts to the defense budget as a result of the sequestration could mean reductions in benefits fo active members of the military and their families. Adam Kredo reports:

Bluffton, S.C.
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich called plans to sequester $600 billion from the defense budget “totally destructive” and “very dangerous to the survival of the country.” The cuts, scheduled to begin in 2013, will automatically occur because of the supercommittee’s inability to cut $1.2 trillion over the next ten years from the federal budget.

There is a certain irony, as well as much truth, in Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s drumbeat of warnings about the consequences of further cuts to U.S. military budgets of the sort threatened under the current deficit reduction law.

In an op-ed at foxnews.com, John Bolton defends defense:

The risks of debilitating cuts to our national-security budget will be a critical issue for Congress when it reconvenes after the August recess. While the media focus as Congress adjourned earlier this month was on the big-picture implications of the legislation lifting the federal debt-ceiling, we cannot lose sight of the difficult -- and imminent -- struggles just ahead in September.

With the congressional “supercommittee” – or, to be precise, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – now complete, the stage is set for a very high drama indeed. Now comes the moment when Americans must confront the costs of remaining the world’s sole superpower, the guarantor of an international system that has created a generation of great-power peace, widespread prosperity, and unprecedented human liberty.

Can the debt deal pass the House of Representatives? House speaker John Boehner has said he believes he has the votes from the Republican caucus, and Steny Hoyer, the Democratic minority whip, says he can deliver 80 to 100 votes from his side of the aisle.

“Extraordinarily difficult and very high risk.” That’s how General Martin Dempsey, the Army’s chief of staff and Obama’s pick to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff, bluntly described proposals by the president and certain lawmakers to cut national security spending by anywhere from $400 billion to $1 trillion or more over the next decade.

Jamie Fly, writing at National Review Online: 

The foremost obligation of the federal government is to provide for the safety of the American people. Yet as the budget debate continues, it’s becoming increasingly clear that certain politicians want to trim the defense budget in order to repurpose money for social entitlement programs, such as health care reform, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. A new white paper, titled “Warning: Hollow Force Ahead,” which has just been released by the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Foreign Policy Initiative, warns of the negative consequences of a thinner defense.

One of the least covered aspects of the debt limit negotiations has been defense spending. Obama administration officials and congressional Democrats have indicated that the White House would like to include significant defense cuts as part of an eventual deal, even beyond the $400 billion in cuts to security spending over the next twelve years that the president announced in April.