Obama Proposes Another Surge in Military Spending

WASHINGTON (Feb. 1) – After moving last year to cancel or scale back some of the military's most expensive weapons programs, the Obama administration announced plans today to continue what has become an era of historic growth in defense spending.

New spending blueprints unveiled at the Pentagon would push the U.S. military's budget to $708 billion next year, the most in inflation-adjusted dollars since World War II. The plan also would keep the military budget growing for years to come.

About $159 billion (22 percent) of the 2011 total will support forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The White House also wants to add $33 billion to this year's defense budget to cover the cost of the 30,000 additional troops President Obama ordered to Afghanistan last fall.

The remaining $548 billion in planned spending next year – up 1.8 percent from 2010 – would cover everyday military operations around the world, weapons purchases and research, and pay and benefits. Included are a 1.4 percent pay hike for uniformed and civilian workers, the smallest in at least a decade, and larger increases (3.4 to 4.2 percent) in housing and subsistence allowances.

The planned growth in defense spending comes as the administration prepares to impose a three-year freeze on outlays across much of the rest of the federal government. While the freeze covers hundreds of programs, their cost totals only about 15 percent of all federal outlays. Defense spending accounts for roughly 20 percent.

That means the $250 billion the White House says the freeze would save over three years is only about one-third of what the Pentagon will spend just in 2011.

But even some defense hawks warned that the federal budget may have long-range trouble absorbing these increases.

As is customary, the defense budget would divide the military's resources like this:

• The Navy, with $161 billion, which includes the Marine Corps
• The Army, $143 billion
• The Air Force, $150 billion

The budget and a congressionally ordered "Quadrennial Defense Review" of defense programs released with it call for cancellation of a few weapons programs, including a new Navy cruiser, the Air Force's C-17 cargo plane and an alternate engine for the new F-35 "Lightning" fighter. Congress expanded the latter two programs last year over White House objections.

But the planned cuts are dwarfed by proposed new investments in helicopters, bomb-hardened ground vehicles and unmanned aircraft, all considered keys to success in the wars the military is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The administration's plans also call for more spending on high-tech weapons the military says it needs for potential future wars. Those include:

• The F-35, the military's largest aircraft development program ever
• Virginia-class attack submarines for the Navy
• Land- and sea-based missile defense and cyberwarfare systems
• A new long-range bomber long sought by the Air Force

Defense Secretary Robert Gates also told reporters today that he wants an overhaul of the F-35 program. He said he'll put a three-star general or admiral in charge to control mushrooming costs and end delays in development.

The F-35 is intended to replace the Air Force's F-16 and the Navy's F/A-18 fighters. The Pentagon wants to buy more than 2,000 of the planes; hundreds of others are expected to be purchased by Great Britain, Australia and other U.S. allies.

"One cannot absorb the additional costs we've had in this program, or the delays, without people being held accountable," Gates said.

Both the budget and review continue his emphasis on internal reforms to control escalating weapons costs, Gates added. The Pentagon plans to hire an additional 20,000 people by 2015 to oversee its acquisitions, he announced.

Gates also said he's been frustrated in efforts to control the military's fastest-growing expense – health care. The military expects to spend $50 billion on medical care next year for service members, their families and military retirees. He argued that the growing cost is linked in part to Congress' refusal to permit increases in the health insurance premiums paid by service members and retirees. The premiums were last adjusted in the mid-1990s.

"I ask anybody to point me to a health insurance program that has not had a premium increased in 15 years," he said. "We certainly would like to work with the Congress in figuring out a way to try and bring some modest control to this program."

The overall budget proposal and the quadrennial review reflect an attempt to balance defense resources between spending on today's wars and acquiring what's needed to prepare for future conflicts, Gates said.

The new review abandons longstanding Pentagon plans to build a force capable of fighting two major wars simultaneously, arguing that the military is more likely to face a wide range of challenges, from major wars to localized terrorist attacks.

"The wars we fight are seldom the wars we plan," Gates said.

But some analysts warn that the plans ignore a looming budgetary train wreck, as the Pentagon continues to plan for more spending than Congress and taxpayers will be able to bear.

Former House Budget Committee staffer Stanley Collender told reporters last week that unless Obama and Congress are willing to take a scalpel to the Pentagon's budget, they'll be unable to control the mushrooming federal deficit.

Defense spending accounts for more than half of the federal government's "discretionary" outlays – those subject to annual adjustments. Because most federal dollars are committed to entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, plus interest payments on the national debt, lawmakers must look to cut discretionary accounts or raise taxes to balance the budget.

Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who directs the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, said that despite the Pentagon's talk of reform, the new quadrennial review remains "a bureaucratic mechanism for informing the outside world that everything is fine."

A serious review would "start with people who are inclined to ask discomfiting questions and to wonder why all these crazy ways we do things should continue," he asserted.