Salon: Obama’s not-so “dangerous” Pentagon cuts

Saturday, Jan 7, 2012 2:00 PM UTC

Republicans pounced on Obama's proposed military cuts as endangering America, but, historically, the plan is modest

By Justin Elliott

In a presentation at the Pentagon Thursday, President Obama announced the results of a “comprehensive defense review” and some hints about how a proposed $487 billion in cuts over the next decade might be made.

Republicans quickly blasted Obama’s initiative as “dangerous,” with columnist Charles Krauthammer calling the plan “a road map to American decline.”

But are the proposed cuts really all that drastic? For an answer to that question and an explanation of how cuts might — or might not — ultimately be made, I spoke to Bill Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

Can you give the quick broad overview of what Obama actually announced yesterday in terms of the size of the military and its budget?

Going back to when Bob Gates was still secretary of defense, they started out talking about cuts of less than $100 billion over five years. At the meeting this week they talked about $487 billion over 10 years. But that’s against what the Pentagon would like to spend, not against what they’re spending now; and they had quite ambitious plans for increases. As President Obama pointed out, this new plan would basically slow the rate of increase. Given that we’re at the highest spending level since World War II, there shouldn’t be as much of an uproar as there has been in Congress. I think a lot of it is just turf wars protecting bureaucracies and contracts.

Read the entire piece at Salon.com