Under
current law,Great Satan"s DoD automatically faces
significant spending cuts over the next 10 years—cuts that America’s
civilian and military leaders have candidly described as “devastating”
and “very high risk.”
This precarious state of the Pentagon’s future fiscal affairs is due
to the Budget Control Act, the controversial August 2011 deal by which
Congress and the President agreed to raise America’s debt limit. As
part of the bargain, the debt-limit deal placed ceilings to cap the
defense budget and other forms of discretionary spending. In
implementing these budgetary caps, 44"s admin proposed in
its fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget to cut Pentagon spending by roughly
$487 billion over the next decade. However, because Congress failed to
meet the Budget Control Act’s deadline to reduce the long-term deficit
by $1.2 trillion, the Pentagon now faces the worst-case scenario:
current law now requires additional across-the-board “sequestration”
cuts to the Pentagon budget totaling more than $500 billion over ten
years.
Unless Congress and the President change current law, sequestration
cuts to national defense will enter into effect on January 2, 2013. In
May 2012, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed
legislation that would replace the first year of sequester cuts with
alternative reductions to mandatory domestic spending. However, the
Democrat-controlled Senate appears not to support this legislation.
Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) recently declared
via social media: “Sequester’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s a
balanced approach to reduce the deficit that shares the pain as well as
the responsibility.”
The stakes couldn’t be higher for the Defense Department—and
America’s long-term national security. As illustrated by the recent
quotations below, civilian and military leaders continue to voice grave
concerns about the dangers of deep defense cuts and underscore the
urgency of taking immediate action to reverse sequestration.
On the Purpose of Sequestration
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta: “Having served
in the Congress and having worked on budget issues most of the time I
was in Congress, I’m very concerned that the Congress, both Democrats
and Republicans, have to show leadership here, and can’t just allow
sequestration to take effect. I mean, the whole purpose of
sequestration, or even developing a crazy vehicle like that, was to
ensure that they would exercise leadership to prevent it from
happening. Instead, they weren’t able to come together on any proposal
and now we have this thing supposedly taking place in January.” (May 3, 2012)
- Secretary of Defense Uncle Leon Panetta: “There isn't
any member I've talked to that doesn't think that sequester is a
disaster… All of them understand that it's the wrong way to go. And I
just have to hope that ultimately, they will find the courage and
leadership to be able to address that issue, de-trigger sequester, deal
with the other challenges that are out there and try to do it as soon as
possible because frankly, the longer this drags on, the more of an
impact it has in terms of the planning process and in terms of the
budget process. And frankly, even though we're not planning for
sequester to take place because it is such a disastrous step if it
occurs, it still has an impact within the department and outside the
department for planning purposes.” (April 16, 2012)
Daniel Werfel, Controller, Office of Management and Budget:
“44 has made clear that Congress can and should act to avoid
the sequester. The intention of the sequester was to drive Congress to a
compromise through the threat of mutually disagreeable cuts to both
defense and non-defense discretionary funding. If allowed to occur, the
sequester would be highly destructive to national security and domestic
priorities and core government functions.” (April 25, 2012)
Congresscat John Boehner (R-OH), Speaker of the House of Representatives:
“When it comes to what's going to happen to our military with these
cuts in January, you can imagine that there are a lot of people
concerned. The Defense Secretary's made clear that these cuts will
devastate out ability to keep our country safe. The White House has
admitted that these cuts will have a devastating impact on our military.
So where is their plan? It's as simple as that.” (May 16, 2012)
Congresslady Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) , Member of the House Armed Services Committee: “The
first responsibility of the United States government is to provide for
the common defense, Without further action by the Senate and the Obama
Administration, significant across the board cuts to defense will take
place in January of next year as part of the sequestration process
resulting from the failure of legislators to reach an agreement on how
to reduce the deficit. This sequestration process came about as a result
of the Budget Control Act that raised the debt ceiling – which I voted
against.” (May 10, 2012)
Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI):
“This sequester was never intended to be policy. It was meant to be
something both parties wished to avoid, in order to motivate members of
the supercommittee to work together…. There is strong bipartisan
agreement that the sequester is bad policy and should be replaced.” (May 9, 2012)
Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee:
“There's no disagreement about the need to replace the meat ax cuts
from the sequester with an alternative approach to reducing the deficit
by at least $1.2 trillion. And I want to emphasize that fact. The
meat-ax across-the-board cuts to both defense and non-defense are a
reckless way to reduce the deficit. And we need a responsible
alternative.” (May 14, 2012)
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Select Committee on Intelligence:
“The good news is that I can’t find anyone around here who actually
thinks this is a good idea. Everybody agrees that this would be
catastrophic. The bad news is that we can’t find enough people around
here who want to do anything about it right away.” (March 29, 2012)
On the Dangers of Sequestration Cuts to Defense
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta: Sequestration
“…would have a devastating effect on not only national defense but I
think on the rest of the country. It’s totally unacceptable, and
frankly our political leaders cannot allow it to happen. That’s where
I’m coming from on this issue.” (May 3, 2012)
- Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta: “I think…
the shadow of sequestration is there. And I don't think we're kidding
anybody by saying that somehow, it's not having some impact. Clearly…
the industrial community is concerned about the potential for its
impact. It continues to be a concern that we have as far as the
possibility that that could happen.” (April 16, 2012)
General Raymond Odierno, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army:
“What even makes sequestration worse is we have no say in where the
cuts come. It is directed across every element of our budget, and it's a
certain percentage. So what that would cause us to do is increase the
pace of our end strength reductions. It would cause a hollowness --
significant hollowness in the force. It would probably cause us to
breach many contracts that we already have in place because we would not
meet the current requirements that we have on our developmental
contracts. So it would affect every asset that we have in every area.
So that's the concern.” (May 10, 2012)
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee:
“These devastating additional $500 billion in proposed cuts to our
military forces would take effect just three months into the new fiscal
year. The Defense Department cannot wait until after this year’s
elections to address this issue. We need to fix it now. President
Obama has already gutted our military with the defense cuts contained in
his budget. Adding sequestration cuts on top of that will have
irreparable consequences.” (March 29, 2012)
Congresscat Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) , House Majority Whip:
“The Pentagon shouldn’t be and hasn’t been immune to spending
reductions, but it is reckless and irresponsible to make arbitrary cuts
to programs vital to our national defense.” (May 3, 2012)
Congresscat Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee:
“The cuts that I outlined take us right to the limit of acceptable
risk. Because the Congressional Super Committee failed to reach an
agreement on mandatory spending, a sequestration mechanism will kick in
on January 1st. Sequestration takes all the cuts I outlined and doubles
them. It pushes us far past the limit of acceptable risk, and would put
this great country in considerable danger.” (March 13, 2012)
- Congresscat Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA): “The
cuts will force another one hundred thousand troops out of the Army and
Marines. We’ll shrink our Navy to its smallest size since before World
War One. And the Air Force will be the smallest in its history. We will
not modernize our nuclear deterrent, which hasn’t seen replacement
systems in decades and is the smallest since the early 1950s.Active duty
military, reservists, federal civilians, and contractors will be laid
off. Some assembly lines and shipyards will close. We estimate that
around one and a half million people will lose their jobs as a result of
the defense cuts in sequestration.” (March 13, 2012)
Congressbabe Martha Roby (R-AL) , Member of the House Armed Services Committee: “Our military will cease to
operate as we know it today. They can't. They don't have the
resources. We will not be able to have the presence that we need to
have in certain areas of this world. And it's frightening." (May 4, 2012)
Congresscat Paul Ryan (R-WI), Chairman of the House Committee on the Budget:
“If there's one thing that we have bipartisan agreement on, if there's
one area where we agree with the president and the secretary of defense,
it's that this sequester will decimate our military at a time when our
men and women are overseas fighting in a war, in a world that has become
much more dangerous.” (May 8, 2012)
Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kelly Ayotte
(R-NH), John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), And John Cornyn
(R-TX): “We all agree that the Defense Department must
eliminate wasteful programs and continue to find efficiencies; however,
our defense policy is becoming less about military strategy and more
about fiscal strategy. Officials are forced to align resources to
reflect arbitrary budget numbers rather than actual threats confronting
the United States.” (March 28, 2012)
- “At a minimum, we have to prevent the across-the-board cuts from taking full effect in 2013.” (March 28, 2012)
On 44’s Shocking Defense Planning and Sequestration
General Lloyd J. Austin III, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Army:
“I think [sequestration] would drive us to go back and redo some of
our planning, certainly make new assessments. That takes time. That
certainly consumes a lot of organizational energy. So we are a bit
concerned about that. I think from an Army perspective, again, we have
not done any planning on this, as you know as you indicated. But the
back of the envelope calculations are such that this would probably mean
a loss of probably another 100,000 troops, 50 percent of those in the
Guard and Reserve. And with those kinds of impacts, that probably would
drive us to go back and relook our planning efforts here.” (May 10, 2012)
General Philip M. Breedlove, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force:
“We think that we would definitely not be able to execute the existing
strategy if we have to go through sequestration. We echo your remark
that it would be devastating. We simply can't afford this one.” (May 10, 2012)
General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., Assistant Commandant, Teufel Hunden:
“We have a tendency to view sequestration as a budget issue, but it's
really not a budget issue. It's a re-ordering of our national
priorities - it's what we won't be able to do. And certainly at the
strategic level, I think what the Secretary has said is, we won't be
able to implement the strategy as currently written if sequestration
goes into effect. From a Marine Corps perspective, we're at 182,000
right now, we're at the margin of being able to meet the strategy.” (May 10, 2012)
Admiral Mark E. Ferguson III, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy:
“I think there are two significant impacts. If you look at
sequestration, the impact on the Navy from the $600 billion defense
reduction would be about $15 billion a year. That is the amount of the
entire ship construction account that we would have to figure out how to
spread in our budget and reduce. Waiting until December and then not
having a resolution at that point would allow a very short cycle for
planning. It will not allow us to make efficient or effective choices.
It would also cause us to go back and relook at the strategy because the
force that comes out of sequestration is not the force that can support
the current strategy that we are operating under.” (May 10, 2012)
Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee:
“I worry that President Obama's proposed defense budget is based more
on, in my view, what was irresponsible and what we did in the Budget
Control Act, and what the Office of Management and Budget has handed you
in terms of a number that treats all federal expenditures the same,
rather than a clear-eyed, objective assessment of our U.S. national
security interests and the kind of military that we need to protect
those interests and the American people.” (May 10, 2012)
Congresscat Rob Wittman (R-VA), Member of the House Armed Services Committee:
“Numbers matter when assessing strategic risk despite the incredible
capability of our current ship inventory. With that said, the
capabilities of these ships matters as well and we need to find the
right balance to execute the maritime strategy of the 21st century.” (April 18, 2012)
