What Military Austerity? No Real Decrease in Pentagon Budget [View all]

[Better Believe It]

What Military Austerity? A Shift in Spending, Not Reduction
No Real Decrease in Pentagon Budget
By the Common Dreams staff
January 27, 2012

The Pentagon released its latest budget request outline on Thursday in what was proposed as a paring down of defense spending; however, as many are now examining, the proposal aims to make cuts in certain areas, but it would actually increase baseline spending over a 10-year period. The proposal would expand the budget for technology and major weapons systems as well as for an increase in presence in Asia.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/27-8


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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 27, 2012

Panetta’s Pentagon: “Austerity”?
By CARL CONETTA and CHARLES KNIGHT

Conetta and Knight are co-directors of the Project on Defense Alternatives, which just released a chart titled “Panetta Releases DoD ‘Austerity’ Budget; Pentagon Retains Most of post-1998 Increase” showing the Pentagon base budget, particularly highlighting that Panetta’s proposal would keep the budget almost level, while sequestration, under the Budget Control Act, would mean a cut in the real budget, but still keep it above Cold War levels.

The group states: “The future-years Pentagon base budget plan released by Secretary Panetta foresees rolling spending back to the level of 2008, corrected for inflation. Spending on the non-war part of the budget during the next five years (2013-2017) will be about 4 percent lower than during the past five (2008-2012) in real terms. The real (that is, ‘inflation corrected’) change from 2012 will be a reduction of 3.2 percent.

“The chart below corrects for inflation by rendering all sums in 2012 dollars. It shows that base-budget spending had jumped 55 percent after inflation between 1998 and 2010. The new budget plan sets 2013 spending at $525 billion, which is 46 percent above the 1998 level.



“The new budget plan — represented by the green trend line — stands in stark contrast to the reductions mandated by the Budget Control Act under the provisions for sequestration (represented by the red trend line). Sequestration would roll Pentagon base-budget spending back to the level of 2004, which would still be 31 percent above the 1998 level (corrected for inflation). The new budget plan and sequestration do have one thing in common: both would keep Pentagon spending above the inflation-adjusted average for the Cold War years (represented by the horizontal dash line).”

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A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.

http://www.accuracy.org/release/panettas-pentagon-austerity/


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Panetta: Military Spending Is Going Up
By David Swanson
26 January 2012

On Thursday, Leon Panetta held a press conference announcing what he called "cuts" to military spending. The first question following his remarks pointed out that the "cuts" are to dream budgets, while the actual spending will be increased over Panetta's 10-year plan. Is there any year, the reporter asked, out of the 10 years in question, other than the first one, 2013, in which spending will actually decrease at all? Panetta replied that he was proposing really truly to cut the projected dream budgets that he had hoped for. In other words, he did not answer the question.

Now, there are additional minor cuts "on the table" as the saying goes, cuts that Panetta has described as disastrous, cuts that would take U.S. military spending back to about 2007 levels, cuts nowhere close to what a majority of the country favors. (How we survived 2007 and all the years preceding it has never been explained.) Earlier this week, Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee sent President Obama a video denouncing these cuts. They are, of course, the cuts mandated by the legislation that created the Super Committee, which failed, resulting in supposedly automatic cuts.

Read the full article at:

http://davidswanson.org/node/3552


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Defense budget plan doesn't cut as deeply as Pentagon says
By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers
January 26, 2012

Pentagon officials unveiled the outlines Thursday of what they called a pared-down defense budget, but their request increases baseline spending beyond the projected end of the Afghan war, even as they plan to reduce ground forces.

At the same time, the department proposed increasing spending on technology and major weapons systems, after a strategic announcement earlier this month in which defense officials said they must be ready for all kinds of warfare and proposed greater use of unmanned aircraft and a more agile ground force.

Arguing that the United States needs to be prepared for myriad potential threats despite ending the war in Iraq — and with congressional opposition to military spending cuts likely to be as stiff as ever despite the uncertain federal fiscal picture — the Pentagon's request calls for an increase in its base budget by $36 billion over the next five years. And its planned reduction in ground forces by 2017 would still leave a larger military than before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon's proposal over five years is an 8 percent decrease in the spending levels the Obama administration proposed last year, a total cut of $259 billion over five years. But the figures also represent an average of 2 percent growth each year over five years, employing a definition of the term "reduction" that may be popular in Washington but is unconventional anywhere else.

Read the full article at:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/26/137056/defense-budget-plan-doesnt-cut.html