WASHINGTON — President Obama’s call to shrink the military, shut bases and cancel weapons to meet the demand for budget cuts tests the resolve of lawmakers who came to Washington determined to slash the deficit.
A new national security strategy reflecting an end to decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan offers the opportunity to reduce defense spending and government deficits by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years – but at a cost of thousands of jobs in lawmakers’ states and districts.
Democrats as well as Republicans are resisting, looking to protect home turf from California, where the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft is built, to Wisconsin, home to speedy Littoral combat ships, to military installations all across the country.
“It’s funny that we want to save money everywhere except when it can bother us,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in an interview. Graham, a member of the Armed Services Committee, is one of the few lawmakers who favors another round of domestic base closings.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently outlined a $525 billion budget for next year that’s $6 billion less than the current level. The proposal is the first step in the deficit-cutting plan that Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last summer that calls for a reduction in projected defense spending of $487 billion over 10 years.
Obama submits his complete budget proposal to Congress on Feb. 13, but Panetta’s preview included enough details to stir alarm on Capitol Hill.
The budget calls for canceling the Air Force’s Global Hawk program, a high-altitude unmanned aircraft used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
The Pentagon said the aircraft’s cost at $215 million apiece make it less cost-effective than the existing U-2 spy planes that burst on the scene in the 1950s and were critical in finding Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962.
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