Pentagon Budget Cuts Deepening for Fiscal 2012, Levin Says
The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman said he expects that a Pentagon budget review will mean cuts well beyond the reductions already pending in Congress for the 2012 fiscal year.
It’s likely the final budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 “will include significant additional suggested reductions in the 2012 budget request, cuts that are even more than the $6 billion reduction to the department’s request that this committee recently reported,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat.
Levin’s committee previously cut $6 billion from its version of the fiscal 2012 defense policy bill.
The House-passed version of the fiscal 2012 defense appropriations bill cut a net of about $9 billion from President Barack Obama’s request for $539 billion for the military, not counting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or military construction. The Senate has not yet acted on its version of the appropriations bill.
Separately, Obama’s nominee to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey, told the committee today that military planners are assessing a potential $80 billion cut to the fiscal 2013 budget, which the Pentagon will draft over the next few months. That cut would help meet Obama’s target to reduce $400 billion over 12 years. Deeper cuts are possible, depending on the outcome of debt reduction talks under way in Washington.
Absorbing Cuts
The Pentagon comptroller in February projected the fiscal 2013 budget to be about $571 billion.
Dempsey said he didn’t know how the military might absorb a $400 billion reduction. The Pentagon’s ongoing comprehensive review of roles, missions and strategy is intended to answer that question, he said. The review is scheduled to be completed by late September, he said.
“We’ve announced a target and we are trying to determine what the impact would be to make that target,” Dempsey said.
In written answers to committee questions provided prior to the hearing, Dempsey said that weapons spending may be squeezed. “My sense is that the current investment budget for major systems is not affordable in this fiscal and operational environment,” he said.
“It is my judgment that we can achieve the level of proposed savings in a way that strengthens the joint force over time,” he said.
‘Extraordinarily Difficult’
Asked at the hearing what the effect on U.S. military readiness might be from a potential $800 billion cut, if that were the result of deficit talks, Dempsey said: “Based on the difficulty of achieving the $400 billion cut, I believe 800 would be extraordinarily difficult and very high-risk.”
In his written policy answers, Dempsey said that although there is “unquestionably a relationship between U.S. security and the debt” and the national debt is a “grave concern,” he “wouldn’t describe our economic condition as the single biggest threat to national security.”
“There are a lot of clear and present threats in the current environment,” Dempsey said. “National security didn’t cause the debt crisis nor will it solve it.”
The current Joint Chiefs chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, has said repeatedly in the last year -- most recently this month -- that “the single-biggest threat to our national security is our debt.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net; Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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