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Dear Friend,
The White House released the president’s fiscal year 2011 defense budget request along with the Pentagon’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review on February 1, 2010. Together these documents signal how the president and our military leadership will deal with the difficult question of how to meet our national security needs in an era of rising deficits and national debt. Unfortunately, both documents fall short of a reassuring answer.
The president’s budget request includes $549 billion for baseline defense spending and $159 billion in supplemental appropriations for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration is also seeking $33 billion as an emergency fiscal year 2010 supplemental to cover the cost of the president’s 30,000 troop increase in Afghanistan, bringing the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to $163 billion in FY 2010 and over $1 trillion in total.
Even without these supplemental funds, the Obama budget continues the high level of defense spending initiated during the Bush administration and skirts the hard choices needed to bring defense spending under control. This administration can and must do more to cut outdated, mismanaged, over-budget weapons programs and bring down the ballooning price of military health care.
The Quadrennial Defense Review, which is intended to provide a long-term vision for U.S. force structure, offers some welcome developments. Notably, it acknowledges the importance of equipping our forces for unconventional conflicts, considers energy and climate change issues in the context of national security, and promotes a whole-of-government approach to national security policy. But the review also calls for the Defense Department to prioritize missions and objectives while simultaneously advancing the vision of a do-everything military that is inconsistent with our national security and our country’s economic health.
As Congress begins to consider the president’s budget request, lawmakers should look at Pentagon spending as critically as they do the domestic discretionary spending President Obama has promised to freeze. By making sensible, strategic cuts to the defense budget, Congress can freeze defense spending at its current level while keeping our military men and women safe and well equipped and without endangering our national security.
Sincerely,
Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities
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