Obama’s Plan to Save the Military From Cuts—at the Expense of Domestic Programs
http://www.thenation.com/blog/166344/obamas-plan-save-military-cuts-expense-domestic-programs
As budget wonks comb over President Obamas outline for fiscal year 2013, a startling White House plan has become clear: the administration is seeking to undo some mandatory cuts to the Pentagon at the expense of critical domestic programs. It does so by basically undoing the defense sequester that kicked in as a result of the Congressional supercommittee on debt. This wasnt a featured part of the White House budget rollout, and for good reasonit undercuts the administrations carefully crafted message of benevolent government action and economic fairness.
The process for this shift is complicated, and has been flagged by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Essentially, Obama wants to eliminate individual spending caps for both military and non-military spending, and institute one single discretionary spending cap instead. Heres the basic rundown.
To understand how deep the retreat really is, one first needs to understand the difference between security spending and defense spending. Spending on defense applies to the National Defense Functionthat is, the entire Pentagon budget, plus $24 billion for nuclear weaponry and environmental cleanup programs at the Department of Energy, the defense activities of the FBI, and a small handful of other defense programs. Security spending, on the other hand, excludes some of the Department of Energy money, along with some of the other FBI and small program fundingbut includes the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security and the International Affairs part of the budget, which is mainly State Department funding and foreign aid.
So from a progressive point of view, to cut the most fat from the military budget you want defense cuts, not security cutsotherwise funding for veterans health and diplomatic efforts is also in jeopardy.