Next year’s military cuts are more substantial, if lawmakers look at a different number: $553 billion, the amount Mr. Obama requested from Congress for the Pentagon in the budget for the 2012 fiscal year. Congress has not passed that budget, and at least one Congressional committee has already reduced the White House request.
But Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a public policy research group in Washington, estimated that with $553 billion as a starting point, reductions in the 2012 Pentagon budget under the debt ceiling deal could amount to $37 billion less than the Pentagon was expecting. In that case, he said, “the department is going to cry foul.”Over the next 10 years, the White House says the immediate caps on all spending will cut $1 trillion from the budget. Of that, some $350 billion is estimated to come from the Pentagon, although administration officials provided no details of how they reached that conclusion. Over all, though, it is familiar if unhappy territory for the Pentagon. The new $350 billion projected cut over 10 years replaces Mr. Obama’s request in April that the Pentagon cut $400 billion over 12 years — more or less a wash for the Defense Department, which has already been reviewing where to make reductions.