2011 Defense Spending was cut $26 billion.

For the Pentagon, Senate appropriators’ 2011 defense spending measure is a mixed bag.

The long-awaited bill grants defense officials’ wishes by zeroing funds for the F35 alternative engine they do not want, but it misses their funding target by $26 billion,  proposing to give the Defense Department $514 billion in its base budget.

That level likely will not please Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has said the Pentagon needs at least $540 billion for its 2011 base budget.

Congress has yet to pass a full defense spending measure for 2011 and instead passed a year long continuing resolution (CR) that contains a $526 billion defense bill, $14 billion under what defense leaders say is sufficient.

A large chunk of the Senate appropriators’ cuts were “taken mainly in savings identified due to revised economic assumptions and a freeze in civilian pay,” according to a Senate Appropriations Committee summary of the bill.

The summary noted despite being $26 billion lower than the Pentagon desires, it fully funds military healthcare and a pay raise for U.S. troops.

While the Senate and Pentagon are $26 billion apart, they are in agreement about an alternate engine program for the F-35 fighter. In a dramatic floor vote last month, the House slashed $450 million for the engine program during consideration of its full-year CR.

Like the House’s defense measure, the Senate appropriators included $157.8 billion to pay for the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

The Senate summary also highlights several areas where senators disagree with the House defense measure under a section titled “irresponsible cuts,” including nuclear weapons modernization and economic assistance for Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the former, the Senate summary states the House’s proposal to cut $312 million from the Pentagon spending plan “would have put at risk the United States’ ability to begin much needed investments in rebuilding our aging nuclear weapons infrastructure and meet the highest priority goals laid out in the Nuclear Posture Review.”

On the latter, the Senate appropriators say a House-passed 28 percent cut to the administration’s “Economic Support Fund” request would “cripple efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and transition responsibility for U.S. operations in Iraq from the military to civilians.”

Perhaps instead of taking money away from our national defense, we should have taken a hard look at Welfare/Medicaid (two programs that were left completely untouched) and see what we could have saved within those programs.

Looks like our military will have to get creative. God bless them.

Copyright (c) March 6, 2011. All rights reserved.

Stop attacking the defense budget.

People wildly overestimate how much we spend on defense and greatly underestimate how much we spend on entitlements.

Unless we reform Welfare and Medicaid, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts, spending on just those 2 entitlements plus interest alone  will consume all federal revenues within the next 35 years. Nothing would be left for defense — or any other discretionary spending, for that matter.

Annual federal spending for these entitlement spending accounts for 32.6 percent of all federal outlays (excluding interest). Defense outlays come in much smaller than that, of just 21.1% of federal spending.

We spend just 4 percent of the gross domestic product, or GDP, on core defense (excluding overseas operations), well below our historical average.

Clearly, defense spending is not “out of control,” nor is it the cause of our rapidly ballooning debt. And yet lawmakers insist our security take a hit.

Defense cuts will have real negative consequences on the military. They will only ratchet up defense spending over the long term.

To accommodate cuts, the Pentagon will need to stretch out buying times for weapons and other equipment. That causes unit prices to soar, raising the ultimate tab for those procurements. Thus, the supposed “cutting” actions actually add upward pressure on long-term spending and debt.

Defense cuts could adversely affect our military capability as well.

The Air Force would need to ground some of its F-15 fleet, weakening the Air National Guards ability to patrol and provide U.S. air defense.

Remember how important those planes were after Sept. 11.

A second Virginia-class submarine and additional destroyer cannot be started, which will delay bringing those capabilities online and drive up costs.

The Army likely would have to postpone working on a new ground-combat vehicle to improve protection for its soldiers. Production of new drones for use in Afghanistan will be pushed back.

Training for soldiers and sailors will be scaled down, and shipyard repairs and maintenance will be canceled.

What I found interesting is that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) as well as a handful of Freshman Republicans were gun ho on cutting defense but lacked the understanding of the importance of such programs.

Sure, savings can be found through greater efficiencies at the Department of Defense. But they should be put back into long-term funding for military modernization and force structure. The military services already have said their modernization accounts are underfunded by about $50 billion a year.

It would be one thing if providing for the “common defense” were some extraconstitutional luxury and thus rightly a target for budget cutting as a matter of principle. But that most definitely is not the case here. Defending the country is a core, enumerated, federal power mandated by the Constitution.

Entitlement spending, not defense, is the source of our nation’s debt problem. Those who ignore this fact aren’t serious about reducing the nation’s spiraling debt. Worse, they undermine the federal government’s ability to meet its constitutional obligation to defend the country.

To see the full text of H.R. 1: Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011 – please visit, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-1

Copyright (c) February 25, 2011. All rights reserved.

Marine Corps’ EFV will be eliminated to make room in the 2012 budget.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month announced plans to cancel several hardware programs in the 2012 budget plan as part of a broader effort that unearthed $150 billion in savings.

Gates plans to take some of those monies and shift them to other needs — but some lawmakers and analysts say the secretary might loose a good chunk as Congress grapples with paring down the federal deficit.

“I don’t expect any major surprises” next week when the next budget plan is made public, said Jim Thomas of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“I don’t think there will be more immediate program cuts,” Thomas added Sunday during “This Week in Defense News.”

Chris Preble of the CATO Institute said deficit-reduction efforts will not be the lone hurdle for Gates’ so-called “efficiencies” effort. Keeping the $150 billion in savings could be further complicated if the planned troop draw downs in Iraq and Afghanistan do not go as planned.

“A lot of the efficiencies [program] is based on troop levels coming down. That’s where you get real savings,” Preble said. “That’s a big if.”

And, he added, there is opposition in Congress — especially among House Republicans — to trim one dime from the Pentagon budget.

“There are already people in Congress saying we shouldn’t be considering budget cuts until the wars are over,” Preble said.

One major program Gates announced he will propose terminating in the 2012 plan is the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV). Its overall expected price tag had grown to $14 billion, and the secretary and Marine leaders said last month that was simply too expensive.

EFV prime contractor General Dynamics and some Republican lawmakers are fighting back, saying the service should buy about 200 and upgrade over 300 of its current amphibious troop-hauling truck.

The analysts said the expeditionary vehicle battle in Congress this year will be a telling sign of calls for deeper defense spending cuts.

Preble said after years of developmental issues, the troubled EFV program has for some time been on just about every “cut list.”

“So if you can’t cut this one,” he said, “then it’s going to be really tough to cut anything else.”

Copyright (c) February 7, 2011. All rights reserved.

Army Reserve needs a bigger budget, Force Chief states.

The U.S. Army Reserve needs new budgeting and training practices that reflect the increased deployment tempo the force has settled into over the last decade, Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz stated.

Since the onset of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the reserve has been “utilitized as an operational force,” but the Army mandates that its “base budgets still be built around a strategic force.”

Reserve budgets are constructed to give units 39 days of training and drill time each year.

However, more training is often needed for the kinds of missions the organization’s forces have been asked to perform in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places in recent years, Stultz said.

Senior Army and military leaders “want the Reserve to show up trained and ready,” Stultz said. “We can do that,” but additional training days — and the funds for them — might be required, he added.

Ground units might need up to 14 additional training days, while aviation units might require even more.

It is unclear where the Army might find the funds to pay for more Reserve training. The Pentagon is already working to stave off additional weapons program cuts and troop reductions.

The Defense Department recently found $150 billion in internal savings, which helped offset a $78 billion White House-ordered funding reduction over five years.

Even without paying for additional training, the Reserve soon will face a shortfall.

Stultz said its annual budget is around $7 billion, and it gets about $500 million annually from war-spending measures.

When the war-funding bills are no more, Reserve officials will have to look internally for savings.

Stultz sees areas where costs can be cut, including eliminating redundant training requirements, increasing simulator use, altering how vehicles and other equipment are scattered among its units, and possibly harnessing the power of the Internet to allow reserve troops to be trained at home.

In addition, Reserve officials are also cutting costs by removing from the service some soldiers at ranks where they are over loaded, like sergeant majors and colonels.

If the Reserve is looking to the Federal Government for additional funding, they should not hold their breath and look internally for savings. It’s a shame that we cannot afford to fund our military (and space program) but that is what happens when a 2000+ page bill full of earmarks are hidden in a healthcare bill.

Copyright (c) February 6, 2011. All rights reserved.