U.S. Senate Defense Panel Cuts $27 Billion From Pentagon Budget
The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee is recommending cutting $27 billion from the Pentagon’s budget request for the fiscal year that started Oct. 1.
The Senate panel yesterday approved the 2012 defense authorization bill, which sets military policy and spending targets for the year. The Senate panel had to approve the bill for a second time this year to apply cuts agreed on as part of the Budget Control Act, which was signed by President Barack Obama Aug. 2.
The Senate panel in June approved a $664.5 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2012, about $6.4 billion less than Obama proposed for the Pentagon and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The committee bill included $18.1 billion for Department of Energy programs under the panel’s jurisdiction, for a total of $682.5 billion.
The panel yesterday proposed an additional $21 billion in cuts to meet the reductions under the budget control act. About $3.6 billion in additional cuts come from the Army’s procurement and research and development accounts, including about $518.7 million from the Joint Tactical Radio System program. Boeing Co., General Dynamics Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) all have a stake in the program.
The program is a family of radios that would work across the four military services and be able to carry voice, data and images using interchangeable software-driven frequencies. The Defense Department in October canceled the Joint Tactical Radio System’s Ground Mobile Radios portion, developed by Boeing, because of rising costs.
Operations and Maintenance
The panel also recommended a $3.1 billion cut from the Defense Department’s operations and maintenance accounts, including $315 million for ammunition in part because of “inefficient ammunition management,’’ according to a committee summary released yesterday.
Other cuts recommended by the panel include $108.6 million for “unnecessary post-production funding’’ for Boeing’s C-17 aircraft program and $120 million from Lockheed Martin’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense system.
The panel also recommended a shift of $4.9 billion from the Pentagon’s operations and maintenance accounts into funding for war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, including maintenance of vehicles and body armor and funding for overseas security guards.
While the panel shifted the $4.9 billion to the overseas contingency operations funding, it also cut $5 billion from war operations. The reduction is recommended because of Obama’s decision to withdraw the 33,000 troops from Afghanistan.
About 10,000 troops will withdraw by December 2011 and the remaining 23,000 by next summer.
“The Department of Defense has informed us that the $5 billion is no longer needed as a result of the planned Afghanistan troop reduction,’’ the panel said in the summary.
-With assistance from Greg Stohr and Richard Rubin in Washington. Editors: Terry Atlas, Jim Rubin.
To contact the reporter on this story: Roxana Tiron in Washington at rtiron@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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