Obama to slash defense budget?
by David Adesnik | February 3, 2009
Pentagon officials have leaked word that the Office of Management and Budget has ordered a 10 percent cut in defense spending for the coming fiscal year, giving Defense Secretary Robert Gates a substantially smaller budget than he requested.
As a candidate, Obama talked about using a “scalpel” to reduce government in a surgical and precise manner. A ten percent across-the-board cut doesn’t sound surgical at all. And what about Obama’s commitment to win the war in Afghanistan while increasing the overall size of our land forces?
This decision isn’t final, so we can hope that Obama remembers his commitments and restores all or most of the Pentagon’s budget. At a moment like this, I am quite glad that Bob Gates is still in charge of DoD.
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2 Comments - add your own
Damir Marusic — February 3, 2009 at 11:01 am
Yeah, not exactly.
The Martin Feldstein argument that Kagan invokes as his first bullet point is a good one, to be sure. But let’s at least be honest about terms as we discuss this: Obama’s increase in the defense budget is less than the Pentagon requested, but it’s a sizable increase nonetheless.
David Adesnik — February 3, 2009 at 11:39 am
Interesting. Better study my numbers.