The White House has directed the Pentagon to reduce its 10-year spending plan by another $25 billion, on top of the roughly $450 billion it’s already planning to cut, according to three government officials/…/The Office of Management and Budget directed the action because the White House decided to protect Veterans Administration medical funding from cuts, said one the officials/.../
The Budget Control Act has an overall cap for fiscal 2012 and 2013 that includes the Defense Department, State Department, Veterans Administration and Department of Homeland Security, so to protect this veterans funding means that all other accounts in the security budget will have to be cut that much more, said Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a non-partisan budget analysis group in Washington. The President’s fiscal 2012 budget request included $52.6 billion for veteran’s health care. The VA’s discretionary budget and veteran’s health care budget is projected to reach $60 billion by fiscal 2016, Harrison said.