Top Pentagon brass should craft plans so the Defense Department is ready if a so-called trigger in the debt-ceiling law is pulled, a move that would return the annual military budget to the 2007 level according to a new report.
The debt-ceiling legislation signed into law on Tuesday contains no firm figure for how deeply Pentagon and national security agency budgets will shrink over the next decade. But the White House and senior Democratic lawmakers say it’ll be $350 billion. If a yet-to-be-formed “supercommittee” of House and Senate members fails to come up with a deficit-reduction plan by late November, the debt-ceiling law requires massive cuts to several troughs of federal spending – including national security agencies. Those cuts could total up to an additional $500 billion over a decade.
Should the panel fail, pulling the trigger, the Pentagon budget would revert to its 2007 level of around $472 billion, according to a new report from Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budget Assessments.
That level would be $99 billion less than the $571 billion the Obama administration projected for 2013 Pentagon spending in its last long-term DOD spending plan, which was submitted to Congress in February.