- Joined
- Oct 20, 2009
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During a decade of warfare, the Pentagon mostly had its way with budgets, as
Congress was reluctant to turn down many spending requests for troops in the
field. There was billions here for IED-detection and billions there for weapons
like the F-35 joint strike fighter, the Virginia class of
submarines, or the Predator drone.
And while the Pentagon was just beginning to trim its spending over the last
year, the debt deal approved by Congress this week raises the
possibility of steeper cuts between $350 billion and $800 billion over the next
decade. And that has left even the most veteran Pentagon budget watchers
surprised.
Nearly everyone in Washington, including Panetta, has known for some time
that the defense budget would be cut: al Qaeda is now vanquished, or nearly so,
as Americans learned recently from White House officials, and
troops are coming home from Afghanistan. Analysts believe the defense cuts for
the short term will be modest, and that cuts over the next decade or so may
sound nasty, but they will be determined by the next president and consequently
may never be enacted.
‘Pentagon’s Worst Nightmare’ - Yahoo! News
Well - I support efforts to quell the beast and downgrade things. I don't think it's as dramatic as people are making it out to be.