Defense Official: Obama Calling for Defense Budget Cuts

Defense Official: Obama Calling for Defense Budget Cuts

www.foxnews.com

The Obama administration has asked the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff to cut the Pentagon's budget request for the fiscal year 2010 by more than 10 percent -- about $55 billion -- a senior U.S. defense official tells FOX News.

Last year's defense budget was $512 billion. Service chiefs and planners will be spending the weekend "burning the midnight oil" looking at ways to cut the budget -- looking especially at weapons programs, the defense official said.

Some overall budget figures are expected to be announced Monday.

Obama met Friday at the White House with a small group of military advisers, including Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman, and Gen. Jim Jones, National Security Council chairman.

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Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Defense budget, Obama promises

Hmmmm.....and didn't Obama say he wasn't going to cut the defense spending???

Granted, I saw this coming, just not so soon.

150M for Obama's coronation could have bought 75,000 M4 carbines.

Seriously, tho, Having personally seen the absolutely asinine amounts of money that were being practically thrown down the #ter in Iraq and Afghanistan without a second thought, I think a $55 billion cut would be fairly easily doable with a little fiscal restraint and thoughtfulness across the DOD. Maybe start with limiting the CG to 2 big screen tv's in his office instead of 6, or allowing him swap out the furniture in his conference room once a year instead of four times.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

We need to pull most of our overseas bases. Especially the ones that are 'protecting' fully capable countries with their own military forces.

I work at a military base, and there is definitely room to cut costs without diminishing the strength of the military.

There is a lot of waste and just a few small things across the board at all domestic bases could cut costs and no one would ever know anything was being done differently.

As long as this doesn't affect our "true defense", i'm ok with it. But the truth is we need to pull all the troops out from the rest of the world and bring him them home. Then we can begin our TRUE defense of this country.

reply to post by jerico65


Thing is though, Afghanistan and Iraq were mostly paid through separate appropriation bills, this it talking about the main DOD budget. And it is simply outrageous for us to throw more money than this at corporate America without second thought yet demand that the defense budget be cut during such a time. I had my suspicions he was going to do this.


[edit on 1-2-2009 by WestPoint23]

reply to post by WestPoint23


That's true. And, when those Presidents want to cut the military budget, they go through a BRAC. We haven't even implemented all the changes from the last BRAC, so I hope another one of those isn't coming.

With the economy the way it is, another BRAC has the ability to kill any town in this country where a military base is the largest employer (like mine). I've been through 2 and they are time consuming and scary for the people that work at these installations.

reply to post by jerico65


lol, good topic

This little communist has no problem running the printing presses full time to pay for every worthless pork barrel project, but now he wants to cut back on the military? He managed to pay off all the foreign banks that had AIG liabilities didn't he?

Even though he believes that government 'creates jobs' and 'creates wealth', I guess he doesn't believe that the military employs anyone. He explodes the nations deficit by trillions of dollars, but now feels it's time to put the squeeze on national defense. Well he did talk about unilateral disarmament in his speech. I guess he can't surrender to the communists and islamo-fascists fast enough.

reply to post by SevenThunders


You do realise that America spends an absurd amount of money on the military anyway? a 50 billion dollar cut? lets just say its cut to 400 billion..oh no your military machine has now been weakened,better make sure Argentina doesn't invade you..i mean really.And who are the communists exactly?

You can't tell me that there isn't some pork in the miltary budget of the USA. I'm pretty sure that it could use a good scrubbing down.

Originally posted by skeptic1
I work at a military base, and there is definitely room to cut costs without diminishing the strength of the military.

There is a lot of waste and just a few small things across the board at all domestic bases could cut costs and no one would ever know anything was being done differently.

I live on a military base, where exactly do you think they can cut back?

I don't like this cut back. Clinton did it during his Presidency and it had bad consequences on the moral of the soldiers.

This is just a small cut, but I'm predicting bigger ones in the future. More bases being closed and projects being canceled will be announced in a year or so.

reply to post by Solomons


You do realize that the American military probably has saved your sorry arse country from being overrun by dictators and thugs half a dozen times, and I'm only guessing where you are from.

The US has been the de-facto defense force of western civilization. If europe or Canada had to actually pay for a real military their economy would be in ruins.

Why not just surrender to the Russians? That will save us some unneeded defense appropriations as well. Maybe we should just hoist a crescent moon flag over the white house and start bowing down to mecca five times a day while beating our wives. No point in trying to save western civilization anyway, they are just trying to commit suicide.

I'm sure it does a fantastic job.

But Bureaucracies just do this. Bureaucracy needs to be trimmed and challenged regularly to maintain budgetary controls and weed out unnecessary and therefore expensive processes.

The ONLY way to do that is to challenge bureaucracy, and give clear directives on expected outcomes of those clean ups.

If he realy wanted to save the budget he could do away with at least three of the largest, most ridiculous agencies in the Federal Government.

1: The ATFE

2: The IRS

3: EPA

Every one of these agencies are staffed by political cronies and relatives of our Congress and Senate and those of tghe old school tie! More wasted spending is done by these three then any other group.

Zindo

Originally posted by skeptic1
There is a lot of waste and just a few small things across the board at all domestic bases could cut costs and no one would ever know anything was being done differently.

The irony of what you have mentioned is errrr, well....ironic.
Yeppers, no one is going to miss that $55 billion because the military has alot of waste, allegedly or so asserted. At any rate, noticed how I emphasized the military? I did so because 1) you claim to work at a military base and 2) the military is but one piece of the overall U.S. government budget. Bear with me here.

Accordingly, if the military can be shaved back $55 billion because of "a lot of waste," how much can other governmental sectors be shaved back for their waste? How much can the entire U.S. government budget be shaved back for having "a lot of waste"?

You know what, regardless of whether or not "no one would ever know anything was done differently" due to the defense cut backs, eeriely, Team Obama is doing nothing but what typical liberal democrat presidents have always done: cut defense spending and shuffling that so-called "a lot of waste" to their own political pork barrels and payoffs.

For example:
Part of the Defense budget is missile defense. As such, that is being cut back $1.4 billion. At the same time, Team Obama is giving an alleged and self-proclaimed non-partisan group --- one sec.......*whew*...ok --- ACORN nearly 8 billion. Political payoffs and skewed priorities, ftw, all at the expense of national defense and security. Do you believe that Team Obama is counting on "no one" ever knowing "anything was being done differently"?

Change we can believe in, huh? Not.


[edit on 7-4-2009 by Seekerof]

The FY10 budget calls for retiring the oldest 250 fighters from the USAF. Here's the problem, to replace them they are stopping production of the F-22 (which we wouldn't have next year anyway) and calling for 513 F-35s over the next five years. The F-35B hasn't even hover tested yet, and they're still MAYBE halfway through the testing schedule. There is NO WAY that they could get even HALF that in the next five years.

The Air National Guard has most of the defense mission for the US. Guess who flies the oldest fighters in the AF......You got it. The ANG gets the hand me downs from the active duty force. There are 30 bases responsible for the fighter mission in the US, by 2022 over HALF OF THEM are out of fighters. Of 18 ANG bases, they're predicting that 12-14 will have retired their fighters with no replacements by 2020.

Anyone else see a problem here?

Some of you still don't seem to get it. The global economic system has collapsed. A multi-trillion dollar credit bubble is bursting as we speak. For 15 years, virtually all of our GDP "growth" has actually been the accumulation of debt. Everything is going to see budget cuts, in time, starting with the things that won't cause riots.

The current (and desperate) corporate-welfare notwithstanding, we will not have Socialism, because we cannot afford Socialism. We don't have the start-up capital for Socialism, and our country doesn't have the borrowing power to secure the necessary capital.

You do realize that the American military probably has saved your sorry arse country from being overrun by dictators and thugs half a dozen times, and I'm only guessing where you are from.

Oh do shut up already. No one gives a rat's ass. Today who are you defending me against? The big bad Russians? Iran? oh I know..the terrorists.


Maybe use the cuts to rehouse some of the people in your tent cities, or work on that pesky infant mortality rate.

Yeah buy more stuff with which to kill, maim, orphan and defend my liberties - You've done a stellar job thus far. I feel safe knowing the "greatest country in the world" is protecting little ole me.

I went to The White House for the 2010 budget and there was a link to GPO Access for the 2009 budget.

The figures being discussed seems to be named 'Discretionary budget authority' in the 2009 budget and 'Base funding' in the 2010 budget.

2009 $515,44 billion
2009 $533.7 billion

There's also 'Department of Defense including cost of overseas contingency operations'

2009 $666 billion
2010 $673 billion

I don't understand how the defense budget can increase from the previous year, but at the same time it is being 'cut'?!