Pentagon’s 2012 Spending Proposal ($553 billion) Is ‘The Largest Request Ever’ Since World War II

[kpete]

Source: Think Progress

Pentagon’s 2012 Spending Proposal Is ‘The Largest Request Ever’ Since World War II

Today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will formally unveil the Pentagon’s spending plan on Capitol Hill. Promising to request “the minimum level of funding we can live with,” defense officials, congressional aides, and analysts insist that the proposal “will make clear that the post-9/11 military spending spree has ended.” But the actual number tells a different story: the Pentagon’s $553 billion price tag for 2012 actually marks “the largest request ever” since World War II:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates already has revealed the Pentagon will seek $553 billion in its 2012 Pentagon budget plan — the largest request ever — and slower growth than planned over the next four years. He also has revealed proposals to end several major weapons programs, including the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV).

That means the spending plan “will be anti-climactic in the broad sense,” according to one senior House defense aide.

Indeed, while Gates promised to cut $78 billion over five years, most of that reduction would take place in 2014 and 2015. As Center for American Progress senior fellow and President Reagan’s former assistant secretary of defense Larry Korb points out, Obama’s request is “5% higher than what the Defense Department plans to spend this year. In inflation-adjusted dollars, this figure is higher than at any time during the Bush years or during the Cold War.” In fact, the total military budget this year “comes in at a thumping $750 billion — an annual tax of more than $7,000 on every household in the country.” And while there are clear ways to cut $1 trillion from the Pentagon budget, it seems that many in the GOP have no intention of doing so.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/14/pentagon-budget-largest/

[Autumn]

1. Yeah

par for the course. K/R we are being hoodwinked and bamboozled.

[ladjf]

2. Get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Empire business. nt

[madmom]

3. “the minimum level of funding we can live with,” ... what about those of us who can't live with our

minimal? There are people out here who are "living" day to day because they have NO funds, what about them?

[Amonester]

13. *them* don't *count*

when does that truth becomes clear?

*them* do not *send* BIG enough checks to pols.

[earthside]

4. Exactly what I predicted.

The idea that Obama was going to cut the War Department's budget ... oh, please.

[liberal N proud]

5. And yesterday on Face the Nation dumbass McCain claimed they were making big cuts

Fucking propaganda out ahead of the truth.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7346124n

[bossy22]

12. they are

major weapons systems such as the EFV, C-17, 2nd JSF engine are being cut. The problem is that other parts of the budget are growing rapidly or have more priority

on edit: it is never mentioned that as a percentage of GDP we are only spending about 4%...this is about 2% lower than the cold war average (in fact during vietnam our budget went close to 10% of GDP). Don't get me wrong, there is alot of fat we can cut out without affect our security the only problem is many times such cuts are distributed "evenly" among the services without regard to priority. That is how you hollow out a military force

[Thor_MN]

24. We could cut the military budget to 1/6th of what we spend and still outspend

the next highest spender. We simply can not afford the wet dreams of the he-man war hawks.

[bossy22]

27. not unless we want to through tricare, military pensions, veteran benefits

down the drain as well. We would have a hollowed out force that would be incapable of really doing anything except coastal and border patrols. We can't really compare our military expenditures to other countries without looking at other aspects- such as size of economy, size of country, population, etc... Just because places like the UK can get by on less than $100 billion doesnt mean a country 10 times its size can.

Clinton barely could run a military on $250 billion dollars back in 1999 (the only reason he was able to do that was because the u.s. had so much cold war equipment that he didnt need to really spend anything on procurement).

[Thor_MN]

29. There is no way in hell that we need to spend nearly 7 times more than China,

other than to appease those that make money off military spending.

[plumbob]

35. Why would I want more than coastal and border patrols?

That's all I want.

Pensions are only $18 billion per year, so that's pennies of the $553 billion request.

[defendandprotect]

34. We can cut an immediate 28% from MIC by MERGING the services ... every other nation has done it!!

[Bigmack]

31. "Hollow out" the military?...

That's what's happening now. The core is being cut out. Our military is headed for collapse...not the supply pogues and office weinies.. the actual grunts. Deployed numerous times, bogged down with heavy vehicles and weapons, losing (yes, I said losing) to less than 25,000 Taliban. Trained grunts (and I use that term as an endearment - I was one) are being used as some kind of social service and funding entity... something for which they have zero training.

Lemme see, getting clobbered in a war in which you can't differentiate the friends from the enemy, in which technology doesn't really seem to give much of an advantage, and in which the country has totally lost interest and support.

I seem to remember a war in the dim and distant past like that .... somewhere in SE Asia.

If you think our military can't collapse, read

THE COLLAPSE OF THE ARMED FORCES

By Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr.
North American Newspaper Alliance
Armed Forces Journal, 7 June, 1971

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/heinl.html

I have issues with your 4% of GDP figures. That doesn't include "Homeland Security" or the military part of pensions, or the military part of nuclear energy, etc. A Trillion bucks is a nice, round figure.

Look at it this way... with our economy reeling, every household's share of the "Defense" expense is around $7,000. Maybe more, depending on the "black" budgets. That amount... in a time of no major wars?

It's really very simple. We can't afford 700 bases overseas. We can't afford ANY new weapons systems. We can't afford to take on any more obligations in the world. We're bleeding our country to death... money and treasure.

We can't afford an Empire, and if we try to maintain one, our subs will be rusting at the docks like the Soviet subs did. If we don't back out of this Empire gracefully, it will come down around our ears.

[Scottybeamer70]

6. The insanity

of this country only seems to get worse by the day!
We don't own the planet........stop pretending we do!!

[tpsbmam]

7. No, no, no, no, no,no, no,no, no,no, no, and oh yeah....NO!!!! K&R nt

[RoccoR5955]

8. Why do the CONs want to cut small programs, and NOT the military

It's beyond me. If we cut the the Pentagon budget in half, we would still be spending more than any other country on Earth, and save 375 billion. The cuts from social programs are peanuts compared to this.

[Dappleganger]

36. DOD contracts is my best guess...

many of those businesses are in their districts and that's how they buy their votes.

[FlyByNight]

9. And the imperial beat goes on

And the rest of us (not politically or economically connected) will be subjected to "austerity".

:puke:

[Doctor_J]

10. But we're getting a lot for our money

Super Bowl fly-overs, lasting peace in Afghanistan and Iraq, millions of jobs to replace the ones lost during the Republican Great Recession, ... I could go on but I just puked up my lunch.

[bossy22]

11. where do they get 750 billion from?

last time i checked the number was 550 for the base and 120 for the wars which equals 670

Also the inflation calculation is incorrect on its face- it uses the CPI when for many major peices of hardware the inflation rate is 3 times higher. In inflation adjusted dollars we spent 16 billion (FY 10 dollars) on shipbuilding in 1984 which bought us 19 ships- today we spend the same amount and it buys us 9 ships. Though a good amount of blame for this can be pushed onto clinton and bush jr since they neglected naval shipbuilding and consitantly changed procurement plans making it almost impossible for the industry to make real longterm investments in infrastructure- this ofcourse lead to our predicament today where many of our shipbuilding projects have just become too expensive. The hopes of the LCS contract is to reverse this trend and finally bring stability to u.s. shipbuilding industry

[we can do it]

14. shut it down -now. no heat, no education, no retirement. no guns no bombs

[grahamhgreen]

15. We need a primary challenger.

[WatsonT]

16. Time for drastic personnel cuts then

Why do we pay to have troops stationed in Germany and a hundred other countries we aren't at war with?

Why can't we work on toning down our international military commitments in Korea, South America, and Africa?

Why do we need the worlds 2nd largest military?

We could switch back to more of a national guard type system: widespread but temporary service to create a large reserve of trained personnel in case we need to mobilize. And maintain a smaller but ultimately more professional and useful standing military: elite infantry and armored units able to move and attack around the globe quickly if needed, a beefed up intelligence service, and maintain a exceptional but reduced navy and airforce (perhaps also involving training many short term sailors and pilots and releasing them from service to maintain a cheap reserve of trained personnel should we get in to some big necessary war).

All this spending is one thing when we have a surplus, but it's absolutely insane now.

And ultimately we can't maintain a powerful military without a strong economy and healthy research. Both of which require money that is disappearing. I'd much rather have to ramp up our military from a weakened state to deal with a future crises starting from the position of economic/technological leader than to struggle to maintain our status as world military leader while we fall behind in economics and technology.

[bossy22]

19. agreed somewhat

i'd like to see a good reduction in active duty army strength and a small reduction in marine corp strength. The one thing i wouldnt cut is the navy- armies can take months to raise but navies take years to build. Even during the great depression the service that was hit the least was the navy- especially when it came to its battle fleet

[WatsonT]

21. But who are we going to fight at sea?

I perfectly understand your logic and don't disagree in general but I think we need to move away from the era of giant carriers just as we moved away from battleships being the kings of the ocean. They're just too good a target for a mass wave of relatively cheap cruise missles.

And if any country should get in to this research the era of the Navy is over: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Thor#Project_Thor

[bossy22]

26. thats the misconception

modern navies almost never duel it out on the high seas anymore- they are now considered the world's police forces and rescue forces. There is no greater disaster relief orginaztion on this planet than the U.S. Navy.

And as for carriers- they are almost indispensible. They can carry a crap load of equipment and more importantly helicopters which are critical in almost any emergency. If it wasnt for the Carl Vinson the Haiti disaster response would be hampered considerably. Plus cruise missles have been around for decades and havent really threatened carriers- they have multitude of defenses themselves (excluding their aircraft) plus their escorts are usually armed to the teath.

[WatsonT]

28. We haven't fought a major war at sea

since the cruise missile became a common occurrence.

We haven't had a major war at sea since wwII.

And that is a lot of money for a world police force (a job I don't think we should be involved with anyway).

If it's only purpose is disaster relief we can do it cheaper with other designs. I'm not saying scrap the carriers, merely stop building them.

If a big war breaks out where we actually need them chances are they will simply be major targets.

Remember: battleships were invincible until they all of a sudden they weren't.

[ProSense]

17. The overall budget is $671, according to this report

Defense Budget Counts on Drawdown in Iraq, Afghanistan

By NATHAN HODGE

The Obama administration is counting on a sharp drawdown in troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming year in order to achieve a first since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks: a decrease in the overall level of defense spending.

All told, the president's budget plan for the Defense Department anticipates fiscal 2012 military spending levels of around $671 billion, a drop from the previous year's total spending request of $708 billion to fund the ongoing wars and cover the Pentagon's core operating budget.

President Barack Obama has proposed a fiscal 2012 base budget request for the Defense Department of $553 billion, slightly above the $549 billion requested last year. Because Congress has yet to pass a defense appropriations bill, the request represents an increase of $22 billion above currently appropriated levels.

On top of that, the administration also plans to seek around $118 billion in wartime spending—referred to in Washington parlance as "overseas contingency operations"—to fund the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Military operations in Afghanistan are projected to cost $107 billion. In Iraq, they will cost $11 billion. The wartime-spending request is a significant drop over the previous year's wartime-funding levels. For fiscal 2011, the administration estimated wartime costs of around $159 billion.

more

[L. Coyote]

18. Can't they take a few years off ....

How much would the defense budget be is all we were paying out was pensions?

[bossy22]

20. probably about 80 billion

but then when you "turned defense spending back on" you would have ramp it up probably close to a trillion to rebuild the military to even half its strength today. The problem with the DOD is that over the last 20 years their procurement has been terrible leading to an inventory of aging equipment- for example- just in the last 2-3 years has the navy actually started to go back on track to get to a steady shipbuilding rate after years of muddling through changing plans. Same with the Air force and army.

[neverforget]

22. They're cutting and it hurts! Instead of 2 engines they get 1! Now that's

austerity!

[grahamhgreen]

23. We need to primary Obama. Badly.

[Luciferous]

25. Agreed.

[alfredo]

30. They said that it will take a decade to rebuild our military

due to the Iraq war. Not only did we lose a lot of good people on the battlefield, but we lost a lot of senior grade NCO's and mid grade officers through career changes. A couple years ago it was revealed that we had a shortage of Drill Sergeants and Majors.

It's going to cost us a half trillion just to care for the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan.

We have some of the great war machines, but they have met its match in the fine Iraqi sand. It will cost 100's of billion to replace the "scrap metal" we are leaving in Iraq. I don't think we should. I'm firmly on the side of Butter in the Guns or Butter debate.

[Enthusiast]

32. Yet we cut taxes on the billionaires.

Downright sickening.

[defendandprotect]

33. End these wars -- move to Electric Cars -- Solar Batteries/Heating --

[mike_c]

37. unbounded trillions for bankers, generals, and the wealthy, but cold and dark...

...for the poor, sick, and elderly. Shame on Obama!

[Baclava]

38. The Cold War is over - do we really need over a hundred bases in Europe?

Seriously