Leon E. Panetta, the Defense Secretary, is going to present his strategy to cut the Pentagon’s budget by hundreds of billions this week. He is expected to propose to shrink the size of the military to only be large enough to fight one ground war and conduct multiple other smaller operations. Pentagon officials are still debating on where the cuts will be made in almost every important area of spending. The idea is to eliminate $450 billion over the course of 10 years, which is about 8% of the current budget.
On top of the obvious concern of how the cuts will affect the future of the American military, the real issue being faced is not the cuts themselves, but where the cuts are coming from. A large chunk of the funding, about a third of the budget, is spent on military personnel costs. It goes to pay for salaries and allowances, health care, retirement, and additional costs. Mr. Panetta himself acknowledged that the personnel cost is unsustainable and the “generous retirement benefits may have to be scaled back to save crucial weapons programs.” On the one hand, spending a huge portion of our defense budget on “generous” benefits is irresponsible, but on the other is it fair to “break a promise to those who risked their lives for the country?” Despite the ethical debate, taking away from the Pentagon’s health care and retirement funds would potentially save billions in the coming years.
Although most of the Pentagon’s budget is put to good use, there is also a lot of government oversight as usual. Hopefully Congress will come up with or approve a way to decrease the spending over time. But, as the article said, “nowhere is balancing budget and strategy more challenging than in deciding how large a ground combat force the nation needs and can afford.”
2 comments:
I have to agree with Jamie on this one. It'll be a hard decision to make. The government SHOULD cut the budget on personnel expenses in order to decrease the cost of the defense program, but at the same time these people do deserve to receive aid for the good their families have done to serve this country. I'd also have to admit I'd rather have the Pentagon cut personnel costs then cut the cost of a vital protection unit or weapon that the U.S. uses. It's really hard to say whether or not the cuts will cause major issues, or if they'll just solve a load of problems that our country has.
Now would not be a good time to decrease spending for veteran retirement and similar personnel costs. Based off studies from the Center of American Progress, it is reported that around 75,000 veterans are homeless "on any given night" and that they are 50% more likely to be homeless than other citizens. They were also shown to be homeless for a longer period of time, on average, than other homeless individuals. This is an appalling fact, especially since these people worked so hard to defend our country. If strategy is to cut spending on the military, I hope this is not an area that will be affected.
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