Pentagon accused of end run on budget cuts (shifts $4 billion to keep it)
WASHINGTON - The Department of Defense has shifted several billion dollars in routine personnel costs into its Afghanistan war budget, a move numerous critics say has the effect of dodging most of the mandatory budget cuts imposed by Congress last year as part of a deal to avoid defaulting on US debt.
The approximately $4 billion in costs shifted to the war budget for active-duty Army and Marine Corps troops represents 80 percent of the $5 billion that defense officials have publicly said they are cutting from their regular budget to meet Congress’s mandatory reduction targets. Those targets were triggered by the Budget Control Act, which passed after a bitter partisan battle last year to raise the government’s debt ceiling and avoid a default.
Pentagon officials played up the $5 billion cut in the regular $525 billion budget last month when President Obama introduced his executive branch spending proposals. They did not mention the accompanying shift of $4 billion in personnel costs to the $88 billion war budget. That was buried in footnotes.
Critics from all along the ideological spectrum say the maneuver confirms that the military is using its war budget as a means of avoiding reductions in overall spending.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2012/03/03/pentagon_transfers_costs_to_war_budget_to_avoid_cuts/?p1=News_links
Always money for war.
