Leo Shane III / Stars and Stripes & Rowan Scarborough / The Washington Times – 2011-07-22 01:06:58
http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/public-support-waning-for-defense-spending-1.149602
Public Support Waning for Defense Spending
Leo Shane III / Stars and Stripes
WASHINGTON (July 19, 2011) — Defense officials have been warning for months that they expect military spending to be reduced significantly in coming years as lawmakers struggle with the ballooning federal budget. Now, a new poll shows the American public might back even steeper cuts in the defense budget.
According to a Rasmussen survey conducted last week, nearly half of Americans polled believe that leaders can make major cuts in defense spending without putting the country in danger. Seventy-nine percent say the United States spends too much on defending other countries. And nearly half of those polled want to withdraw all US troops from Europe and Japan.
The ideas come at a time when US military leaders are looking for a way to trim more than $400 billion in defense spending in coming years, possibly even more. President Barack Obama has hinted that he’d like to see even steeper cuts in projected defense spending.
Only 49 percent of those surveyed see a need for the United States to remain in NATO, despite the group’s heavy involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Only four percent of those surveyed think the United States should spend more on “protecting its friends” overseas, and about 11 percent believe that America should be “chiefly responsible for peace and the establishment of democracy in the rest of the world.”
But despite the budding resentment for American military deployments overseas, 60 percent of the poll participants said they still believe US troops should stay in South Korea, working in close proximity to the potential North Korean threat.
Currently, the US military has more than 250,000 troops deployed in more than 100 foreign countries not counting Iraq and Afghanistan.
Liberals See Opportunity for Big Cuts in Defense: Push for Troop, Arms Levels after Cold War
Rowan Scarborough / The Washington Times
WASHINGTON (July 18, 2011) — The political left is pressing the White House and Congress to inflict a wave of Pentagon budget cuts not seen since the post-Cold War 1990s.
Liberals are citing the debt crisis and troop drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan to argue that now is the time for the Defense Department to shed people, missions and weapons after a decade of doubling arms spending after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The proposals, including one from the Center for America Progress, go well beyond President Obama’s call in April for $400 billion in defense cuts over 12 years. The center — run by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to President Clinton — wants that much in reductions over the next three years and $1 trillion from what had been projected increases over the next decade.
Some House Democrats, led by Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, also have called for $1 trillion in cuts.
“I think this is the time because of a combination of the deficit and the changing way in which we’re going to deal with threats from groups like al Qaeda,” said American Progress‘ Lawrence Korb, a longtime defense analyst in Washington.
The political left is pressing the White House and Congress to inflict a wave of Pentagon budget cuts not seen since the post-Cold War 1990s.
Liberals are citing the debt crisis and troop drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan to argue that now is the time for the Defense Department to shed people, missions and weapons after a decade of doubling arms spending after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The proposals, including one from the Center for America Progress, go well beyond President Obama’s call in April for $400 billion in defense cuts over 12 years. The center — run by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to President Clinton — wants that much in reductions over the next three years and $1 trillion from what had been projected increases over the next decade.
The Navy’s 11 carriers — a key way America projects immediate air power overseas — would be trimmed to nine, and with it other surface ships. A full third of 150,000 troops in Europe and Asia would be ordered home.
“You may not be able to keep as many carriers forward-deployed,” said Mr. Korb. “You would have to surge them, but I don’t see any missions you could not do.”
However, reducing the number of active carriers to nine means only three typically would be deployed at one time, possibly leaving the Pacific without a surface ship strike force.
“If the Chinese are going to threaten Taiwan, they’re going to do it with short-legged stuff, short-range ballistic missiles, right from shore,” Mr. Korb said. “We can’t do it that way. If the threat were Mexico, not to worry. We build diesel submarines and short-range fighters, and we’d call it a day.”
Such drastic cuts would face strong Republican opposition. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said the GOP would never approve cuts of $1 trillion.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, released a detailed budget plan that calls for modest defense drawdowns over five years. He argued that the Defense Department’s total budget share already has decreased from 25 percent to 20 percent.
A smattering of conservatives are advocating more shrinkage. Some Republicans on Mr. Obama’s deficit commission supported cuts above $400 million.
With all troops due to be pulled out of Iraq this year and Afghanistan by 2014, the Pentagon could save $100 billion annually on those two accounts alone. Mr. Gates instituted more than $100 billion in savings, although some of that money was redirected into other arms programs.
The next phase is likely to be revealed in Mr. Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget in February or in some grand deficit-reduction agreement between him and Congress.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this year: “We can’t hold ourselves exempt from the belt-tightening. Neither can we allow ourselves to contribute to the very debt that puts our long-term security at risk.”
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who proved a hawkish director of the CIA, vowed to Congress that he would not let the military go hollow as it did in the late 1970s.
On July 8, he urged the White House and Congress to base cuts on a strategy. He expressed his concern about negotiators who would just “just pick a number and throw it at the Defense Department without really looking at policy, without looking at what makes sense.”
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