After Expanding The Welfare State As Much As Possible, Obama Shocks With Announcement Of Plan To Slash Wartime Military For First Time Since 9-11
Jan 6, 2011 16 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
The Pentagon will have to cut spending by $78 billion over the next five years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday, forcing the Army and Marine Corps to shrink the number of troops on active duty and eventually imposing the first freeze on military spending since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The surprise announcement from Gates was a reminder for the military establishment – which has benefited from a gusher of new money over the past decade – that it will not remain exempt from painful austerity measures that federal lawmakers say will be necessary to control the soaring national debt.
In a news conference to announce what he described as efficiency measures, Gates said he hopes that “what had been a culture of endless money . . . will become a culture of savings and restraint” at the Defense Department.
At a time of “extreme fiscal duress,” he said, “every dollar spent on excess overhead or unneeded programs . . . is a dollar not available to support our troops” or to deal with future threats.
“We must come to realize that not every defense program is necessary, not every defense dollar is sacred or well-spent, and more of everything is simply not sustainable,” Gates said.
In response to questions, he emphasized that the $78 billion reduction over the next five years actually represents a “decline in the rate of growth,” since the Pentagon budget will grow “in absolute dollars” every year. “The focus here is on a reduction in the rate of growth as opposed to absolute cuts,” he said.
Gates also stressed that even after the reductions in troop strength, the Army and Marine Corps both will still be larger than they were when he became defense secretary four years ago. The Army will be bigger by about 40,000 soldiers, and the Marines will still have 7,000 to 12,000 more troops, he said.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the news conference that “the [service] chiefs and I are in complete support of these decisions.” He added: “We helped craft the specifics, and these are our decisions, too. . . . We can’t hold ourselves exempt from the belt-tightening.”
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Gates predicted that the decisions would come under fire from critics who charge that “we either are gutting defense or we are not cutting nearly enough.”
Asked about reaction from members of Congress who have been briefed so far about the measures, Gates said the information imparted “was a little overwhelming” and that “there were a number of questions, but very little editorial comment.”
Gates had hoped to spare the Pentagon from the budget ax. Over the past two years, he cut dozens of expensive weapons programs and more recently sought to persuade lawmakers that the military had adopted a newfound thriftiness that would justify small but steady percentage increases in the size of its budget for the foreseeable future.
On Thursday, he said the armed services had successfully carried out a directive he issued in May to squeeze $100 billion in savings over the next five years by eliminating low-priority programs, thinning command structures and reducing overhead at the Pentagon. In return, he said, the Army, Navy and Air Force will get to reallocate nearly all of that money on new weapons systems and other combat-related projects.
But the fiscal realities facing the federal government led the Obama administration in recent weeks to order Gates to cut an additional $78 billion from its long-term spending plan.
The Pentagon will see a short-term boost in its budget next year to about $554 billion, excluding the cost of fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After that, however, annual spending increases will dwindle until they flatten completely in 2015 and 2016, with no extra money beyond the rate of inflation.
As a result, Gates said, the Army will cut the number of soldiers on active duty by 27,000 and the Marines by 15,000 to 20,000. Those trims will not take place until 2015, which is when Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pledged that his country’s armed forces will take the lead responsibility for security there.
There are currently about 202,000 Marines on active duty, up from 175,000 in 2007. The Army has about 569,000 soldiers on active duty, including a temporary boost of 22,000 forces that will lapse separately in 2014.
