The election-year defense budget that President Barack Obama will present today is destined to receive a frosty reception in Congress this week, particularly from Republicans.
The $525 billion base budget, which doesn’t include $88.4 billion in war funding, amounts to a 1.1 percent cut from what Congress approved for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30/.../
Even with the proposed cuts, Panetta’s budget may be “highly optimistic” because it assumes that Congress will find a way to avoid about $500 billion in additional defense cuts over a decade that would be required under a deficit-reduction law approved last year, according to Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
If history is any guide, Harrison wrote, the drawdowns from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars means that “defense spending will decline steadily over the decade, not remain flat as the budget plan projects. The failure to plan for the possibility of additional reductions in defense spending is a major shortfall in the new defense strategy.”