Fiscal cliff offers hint at more defense cuts

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Repub­li­cans’ “fis­cal cliff” coun­terof­fer to Pres­i­dent Barack Obama hints at bil­lions of dol­lars in mil­i­tary cuts on top of the nearly $500 bil­lion that the White House and Con­gress backed last year, and even the fiercest defense hawks acknowl­edge that the Pen­ta­gon faces another finan­cial hit.

The pro­posal that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other Repub­li­can lead­ers sent to the White House this week calls for cuts of $300 bil­lion in dis­cre­tionary spend­ing to achieve sav­ings of $2.2 tril­lion over 10 years. The blue­print offered no specifics on the cuts, although the Pen­ta­gon and defense-related depart­ments such as Home­land Secu­rity and State make up roughly half of the fed­eral government’s dis­cre­tionary spending.

By any cred­i­ble cal­cu­la­tion, the mil­i­tary, which is still com­ing to grips with the half-trillion-dollar cut in last year’s deficit-cutting law, is look­ing at an addi­tional $10 bil­lion to $15 bil­lion cut in pro­jected defense spend­ing each year for the next decade. It’s a prospect that Repub­li­cans rec­og­nize is the new real­ity, with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan end­ing and deficits demand­ing deep cuts.

“Not too dev­as­tat­ing,” said Sen. John McCain of Ari­zona, the top Repub­li­can on the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee. That’s espe­cially true com­pared with the alter­na­tive that McCain dreads — the dou­ble hit of tax hikes and auto­matic spend­ing cuts dubbed the fis­cal cliff.

If Obama and Con­gress are unable to reach a deal this month, the Pen­ta­gon would face across-the-board cuts of some $55 bil­lion after the first of the year and nearly $500 bil­lion over a decade. Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta and mil­i­tary lead­ers have warned that such a meat-ax approach to the bud­get would do con­sid­er­able harm.

“My job is to stop seques­tra­tion,” McCain said, using the bud­getary term for the auto­matic cuts.

Pen­ta­gon spend­ing still has its con­gres­sional pro­tec­tors, espe­cially with job-producing weapons, air­craft and ships built in nearly every cor­ner of the coun­try. In the past decade, the base defense bud­get has nearly dou­bled, from $297 bil­lion in 2001 to more than $520 bil­lion. The amount does not include the bil­lions spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The cuts Obama and Con­gress are talk­ing about would be to pro­jected spend­ing that envi­sioned Pen­ta­gon bud­gets ris­ing to lev­els of more than $700 bil­lion a year in a decade. Tea par­ty­ers and fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives recently elected to Con­gress have shown a will­ing­ness to cut defense, tra­di­tion­ally con­sid­ered almost untouchable.

“We under­stand that in get­ting to an agree­ment that dri­ves down the debt … that there are going to be cuts,” said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., pres­i­dent of the 2010 fresh­man class in the House. “Mak­ing cuts strate­gi­cally makes sense. Doing it through seques­tra­tion does not make sense.

“I would argue that intel­li­gence, espe­cially with regard to cyber­se­cu­rity, is prob­a­bly an area where we need to spend more money,” Scott added. “I’m wor­ried more about China using viruses and tech­nol­ogy against our coun­try than I am about their air­craft car­ri­ers. At the same time, look at other areas of the mil­i­tary and say, ‘When is the next time we really need that weapon system?’”

Said Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, R-S.C., of addi­tional cuts, “Poten­tially, yes, but not a trillion.”

Law­mak­ers who are real­is­tic about defense cuts sud­denly have some sig­nif­i­cant reinforcements.

A coali­tion of promi­nent Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats, includ­ing for­mer defense, state and trea­sury sec­re­taries as well as mil­i­tary and con­gres­sional lead­ers, made an urgent plea Tues­day to Obama and Con­gress to reach a deal on the nation’s finances.

At a news con­fer­ence a few blocks from the Capi­tol, the group called the national debt “the sin­gle great­est threat to our national secu­rity.” The coali­tion also was run­ning full-page ads in major news­pa­pers on Wednes­day call­ing on Wash­ing­ton lead­ers to con­sider every pos­si­ble step to help fix the fis­cal cri­sis, from rais­ing tax rates to changes to Medicare and Social Secu­rity to cuts in defense.

“In our judg­ment, advances in tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties and the chang­ing nature of threats make it pos­si­ble, if prop­erly done, to spend less on a more intel­li­gent, effi­cient and con­tem­po­rary defense strat­egy that main­tains our mil­i­tary supe­ri­or­ity and national secu­rity,” the group said.

Among the mem­bers of the coali­tion are retired Adm. Michael Mullen, the for­mer chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; for­mer defense sec­re­taries Robert Gates and Frank Car­lucci; Paul Vol­cker, the for­mer chair­man of the Fed­eral Reserve; and for­mer sec­re­taries of state James Baker, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.

For­mer Sens. Sam Nunn and John Warner, who once led the Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, also are mem­bers of the coalition.

Any deal between Obama and Boehner that avoids the fis­cal cliff and reduces the deficit will still face some resis­tance among rank-and-file law­mak­ers over defense cuts, espe­cially in the House. The reduc­tions will be par­tic­u­larly hard for GOP law­mak­ers who were count­ing on Mitt Rom­ney to win the White House and try to reverse the cuts in defense.

Some law­mak­ers said the nearly $500 bil­lion in cuts in the bud­get deal last year were hard enough.

“I felt that those cuts were plenty deep,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a mem­ber of the Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee. “They caused con­sid­er­able reduc­tion in the num­ber of ser­vice mem­bers and raised some con­cerns whether we’re going to be stretched too thin, and whether we’re going to hol­low out the services.”

Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., a retired Army offi­cer, said the bud­get law cuts are “quite suf­fi­cient” and any more reduc­tions would have a seri­ous impact on the military.

“How many more com­bat tours of duty do you want these young men and women to be doing, five or six tours of duty?” West said. “We’re start­ing to break our military’s back. The world is a more dan­ger­ous place. After every major com­bat engage­ment, we dec­i­mate our mil­i­tary and then we try to ramp up to play catch up in the next war.”

The next solu­tion, West said, would be for some mem­bers of Con­gress “to put on a hel­met and fix a bay­o­net and they could go fight.”

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Dec 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.