Defending Defense Fact Sheet: The Dangers of Deep Defense Cuts: What America’s Civilian and Military Leaders are Saying -- Defending Defense
Under current law, the U.S. Department of Defense automatically faces significant spending cuts over the next 10 years—cuts that America’s civilian and military leaders have candidly described as “devastating” and “very high risk.”
This precarious state of the Pentagon’s future fiscal affairs is due to the Budget Control Act, the controversial August 2011 deal by which Congress and the President agreed to raise America’s debt limit. As part of the bargain, the debt-limit deal placed ceilings to cap the defense budget and other forms of discretionary spending. In implementing these budgetary caps, the Obama administration proposed in its fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget to cut Pentagon spending by roughly $487 billion over the next decade. However, because Congress failed to meet the Budget Control Act’s deadline to reduce the long-term deficit by $1.2 trillion, the Pentagon now faces the worst-case scenario: current law now requires additional across-the-board “sequestration” cuts to the Pentagon budget totaling more than $500 billion over ten years.
Read more ....
My Comment: A long list of quotes. Well worth the read to see what everyone is talking about.