On Thursday, the White House previewed its plans to shrink defense spending, announcing its intention to reduce the size of the army and scale back counterinsurgency operations. “Our military will be leaner,” Obama told officials on a visit to the Pentagon Thursday.
It’s not just American combat efforts that will likely have to slim down. Health care has, in recent years, become a major cost for the military with few popular ways for the Pentagon to rein in its medical spending/.../
Todd Harrison, a policy analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, recently crunched the numbers on what would happen if personnel costs kept growing at the same rate they have for the past decade, and the overall defense budget only kept pace with inflation. Under that scenario, the entire defense budget would be consumed by paying benefits, both for health care and other services, in 2039. “We’ll have well-paid, happy and healthy retirees, but we’ll also have no money for equipment, training or regular operations,” Harrison says. “Obviously, we can’t let that happen.”