Every year, salaries and benefits for service members take up a larger share of the Pentagon's overall budget, threatening to crowd out all other military priorities. "If we continue on our current path -- with personnel costs growing the way they have -- we're eventually going to price ourselves out of being able to field a military of any size," warned Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The administration has put forward a plan to rein in the costs in part by increasing fees for military health care, but Congress quickly overturned the proposal. Will the president, in a second term and no longer fighting for reelection, be able to push through unpopular cost-cutting measures to put the military's budget on a sustainable path?
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