The funding request, which includes painful cuts that will be felt across the country, sets the stage for a new struggle between President Barack Obama's administration and Congress over how much the Pentagon should spend on national security as the country ends a decade of war and tries to curb trillion-dollar budget deficits. "Make no mistake, the savings that we are proposing will impact all 50 states and many districts, congressional districts across America," Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told a news conference at the Pentagon.
"This will be a test of whether reducing the deficit is about talk or action." Panetta, previewing plans that will be detailed next month, said he would ask for a $525 billion base budget for the 2013 fiscal year, the first time since before the September 11, 2001, attacks that the Pentagon has asked for less than the previous year. That compares with $531 billion approved this year. Panetta said he would seek $88.4 billion to support overseas combat operations, primarily in Afghanistan, down from $115 billion in 2012 largely due to the end of the war in Iraq and the withdrawal of US forces there at the end of last year.
Congress ultimately controls the Pentagon's purse strings and regularly intervenes to change the size and detail of military spending as it sees fit. The Defence Department's budget accounts for about 20 percent of total federal spending. Republican lawmakers who oversee military affairs on Capitol Hill sharply criticised the plan. Senator John McCain said it "ignored the lessons of history" by imposing massive cuts on the military, and Representative Buck McKeon said it reflected "Obama's vision of an America that is weakened, not strengthened, by our men and women in uniform."
MORE CUTS TO COME? The 2013 budget is Panetta's first as defence secretary and is the first to take into account the Budget Control Act passed by Congress in August that requires the Pentagon to cut $487 billion in projected spending over the next decade.
The budget plan does not take into account an additional $600 billion in defense cuts that could be required after Congress failed to pass a compromise agreement to cut government spending by $1.2 trillion. The Pentagon could face cuts of another $50 billion a year, starting in 2013, unless Congress changes the law.
The budget begins to flesh out a new military strategy announced by the Pentagon earlier this month that calls for a shift in focus from the ground wars of the past decade towards efforts to preserve stability in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East.