One of the big-ticket items in any budget deal will have to be the defense budget/…/ Having less money means deciding what is and isn't going to be done, determining the real dangers that the country is going to face in the next decade and the likelihood of those dangers occurring.
"And that means there are going to be winners and losers," says Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Harrison has some guesses as to who those losers may be. First up: the Army and the Marines. "As we continue the withdrawal from Iraq, we start the drawdown in Afghanistan, eventually these wars will come to an end, troops will be home. I think there will be little appetite for this sort of major counterinsurgency campaign in the future," he says.
A smaller appetite could mean reducing the size of the Army and Marine Corps. That would have a quick and real effect: Not as many people would be paid, there would be fewer training exercises to run and fewer missions with fewer people doing them. It is one of the few things that can be cut that will have an immediate impact, and there are reports that the Gang of Six deal calls for $80 billion in defense cuts next year.