Big Defense Budget Request Actually Down in Total Dollars

Defense Secretary Robert Gates today unveiled the Pentagon's proposed 2012 budget, the department's largest-ever spending request, calling it "a reasonable, responsible and sustainable level of funding" given the national security threats facing the United States.

The request included $553 billion for the base budget of the Defense Department and an additional $118 billion to support ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter number represents a decline from the Pentagon's 2011 spending, primarily because of the expected troop withdrawal from Iraq, but the base budget would increase by about 6 percent.

"The key point is this budget is down in terms of total dollars for defense," Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale told reporters at the Pentagon.

Whether the Pentagon is spending too much -- or too little -- has come down to a heated debate, with some, such as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, arguing that defense spending is actually on the low side.

"Military expenditures as a percentage of the GDP in a time of war are at an historic low," Rumsfeld, who recently released his memoir, told the Conservative Political Action Conference last week. "Let's be clear: The radical Islamists are not cutting back their recruiting, their purchasing, their training and their planning. Nor can we."

Yet others, including defense analysts publishing essays in a new book released today, argue that using gross domestic product as a measure for defense spending is misleading, because it ignores the rapid growth in GDP since World War II, as well as the ebb and flow of national security threats.

"[T]he arguments for holding defense spending at a constant percentage of GDP appear designed more to ensure a money flow to the defense complex than to improve the security and well-being of the rest of our citizens," wrote Chet Richards, a retired Air Force colonel.

Whether too much or too little, the new budget shows a clear break with post-9/11 increases in defense spending. "The era of the real increases in defense budgets is drawing to a close," Jim Thomas, vice president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said last week at a pre-budget briefing.

Gates acknowledged the close scrutiny the Defense Department budget is expected to get amid escalating budget deficits. He also pointed to his cost-cutting "efficiency initiative," designed to trim fat from the Pentagon budget through measures that include eliminating unnecessary staff and offices. The majority savings from those measures is being reinvested in other areas, such as weapons-buying programs, though some is being used to cut the overall budget.

The budget also targets a number of weapons systems that Gates argues are obsolete or unneeded, including the Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an amphibious tank used for storming beaches; the Army's Surface Launched Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile air defense system; and a Navy surface-to-air missile known as the SM-2 Block IIIB.

Even with Pentagon officials expected to appear on the Hill this week to defend the new budget, Congress still hasn't passed the 2011 budget. "I believe the department can get by with a lower number," Gates said, adding that the Pentagon needed $540 billion of the $549 billion originally requested.

But Gates warned that if the continuing resolution isn't passed soon, the situation for the military "may soon turn into a crisis."