Choosing Decline: The Meaning of Obama's Defense Guidance and Budget

Choosing Decline: The Meaning of Obama's Defense Guidance and Budget

Thursday, February 16

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The Defending Defense project, a joint initiative of AEI, the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Heritage Foundation, brought together Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Representatives Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), J. Randy Forbes (R-VA), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Thursday, February 16, 2012, to discuss the implications of President Obama’s new strategic defense guidance and fiscal year 2013 budget proposal for the Pentagon.  Former Senator Jim Talent of the Heritage Foundation moderated the discussion, and Thomas Donnelly of AEI gave closing remarks.

Senator Kyl began the event by highlighting the dangers posed to U.S. national security by “sequestration” spending cuts, which will slash an additional $500 billion from the defense budget over the next ten years.  He then discussed the Down Payment to Protect National Security Act (S. 2065), a bill that he and a group of Senators introduced in February 2012 to amend current law and avoid the first year of sequestration cuts, and expressed disbelief that President Obama has threatened to veto any bill to stop sequestration.  The Senator also argued that the President’s proposed budget weakens America’s nuclear deterrent.  The budget severs the commitments that the President made during the debate over the new arms control treaty with Russia (New START) to modernize the aging U.S nuclear arsenal.  Kyl expressed alarm that rather than fulfill these commitments, and shore up America’s deterrent in a dangerous world, the President is reportedly instructing the Pentagon to examine just how numerically low the U.S. can go in nuclear weapons. The Senator said that due to Russia and China vigorously modernizing their nuclear arsenals, conditions are clearly not ripe for U.S. unilateral disarmament. He warned that these policies are more likely to encourage proliferation and invite aggression.

Congressman McKeon, who chairs the House Armed Service Committee and introduced the House version of the Down Payment to Protect National Security Act (H.R. 3662) in December 2011, followed by reiterating the dangers posed by defense sequestration.  He reiterated his strong desire to reverse sequestration cuts to the Pentagon  Chairman McKeon said that while defense spending counts for less than 20 percent of the federal budget, it has already contributed to more than 50 percent of Washington’s deficit-reduction efforts—in contrast to mandatory and discretionary domestic spending, which together are continuing to grow explosively.

Congressman Forbes attacked the Obama Administration’s strategic guidance document, proclaiming it “is not a strategy for a superpower. It’s a menu for mediocrity.” He urged members of the audience to make the slashing of defense a national issue, not just one for Congress and Washington. He lamented the “deafening silence” of U.S. military officials, who he feels should be more vocal about their concerns. Congresswoman Blackburn added that based on the Budget, the Asia-Pacific shift in the guidance document was “doomed from the start.”

Senator Ayotte began her remarks with a few key Reagan quotes that emphasized his view that weakness only invites aggression. She criticized Obama’s decision to withdraw 23,000 troops during the fighting season, a decision that was not recommended by any U.S. commander. She said the move was “putting political considerations above what is doing right for our national security.” She also lamented that the U.S. military had not yet performed a risk assessment based on current and future DOD budget cuts. “We shouldn’t do a defense authorization without [it],” she stated. She concluded that this budget does not make us safer. Senator Graham shifted to a more international focus, explaining how NATO countries’ defense budgets have deteriorated in recent years. As our allies’ militaries shrink, he continued, security gaps will have to be picked up by someone. Implicit within this warning was that with shrinking U.S. defense budgets, the U.S. may not be able to pick up these gaps. This will lead to a more destabilizing and dangerous world. Finally, within the U.S., he closed that Republicans need to be “for something,” not just against sequestration.

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Key Quotes:

Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Senate Republican Whip

On the need to undo devastating sequestration cuts to defense:

• “Our approach to fund it simply continues the pay-freeze that the President put into effect through 2014.  And it has a much more—well, it has an attrition rate of federal employees that is only half as much as the Simpson-Bowles [Commission] called for.  So that for every three employees that voluntarily leave government service, we’d replace two of them, not three.  Simpson-Bowles recommended only replacing one.  So we would eventually reduce the work force  by about 5 percent, and I don’t know of anybody who doesn’t think that can be done.  So this is a relatively painless way to achieve the $100-plus billion to avoid the first year of sequestration.“

• “Secretary Panetta said the sequester would do catastrophic damage to our military and its ability to protect our country.  And what’s amazing to me is that the President said that he would veto any effort to do this.  Now, he’s the Commander-in-Chief, and when his own Defense Secretary says that it would be catastrophic, it seems to me that the President needs to readjust his thinking on that.”

On Obama’s promise of nuclear modernization

• “I spoke about the fact that the President had made the commitment to us. Secretary Gates reflected the fact that these commitments were one of the reasons the [New] START [nuclear arms control] treaty was adopted. He told Congress, "This [nuclear] modernization program was very carefully worked out between ourselves and the Department of Energy.” And frankly, where we came out on that played a fairly significant role in the willingness of the Senate to ratify the new START agreement… I think the commitment that was made to us has been broken.”

• “There are a couple of ways we can [make the President honor his commitment]… One way is to build on some legislation that the House passed, which was to connect up the funding for the reductions in nuclear warheads called for by New START to adequate funding for modernization. If you can't modernize what we've got, then it's more difficult to get rid of some of the weapons we have and still have the same degree of deterrent. So if the Administration wants to help out here in reducing the number of warheads, they can help us get the funding across the board for modernization.”

 Congressman Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-CA), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee

On the need to undo devastating sequestration cuts to defense:

• "I was promised that sequestration would never happen that we would make it so onerous, that we would make sure that it wouldn’t happen.  We had the Super Committee set up to address that second trillion plus on the entitlement side, and we all know what happened.  They were not able to complete that. And so we are left with this hanging over us that kicks in next January….  What I have been trying to do is bring this to the attention of my colleagues to say the prudent thing, the responsible thing, is to fix this before the calamity, or that chaos, hits.”

On the need to address the real drivers of America’s debt and deficit:

• “I am a strong supporter of defense; I am also a strong supporter of a sound fiscal policy.  My concern is that we have been building up, for years we have spent money that we do not have, and it is escalating the last few years.  And not all because President Obama, but because various reasons, but one is because 10,000 of us are going on the Medicare and Social Security rolls every day now, the baby boomers, and that’s why it’s gotten out of sight so much in the last few years.”

• “I think we have gone overboard when I say that the defense department accounts for 20 percent of overall spending, yet they took just on the first front, 50 percent of the savings out of defense.  I think that is plenty, and that is before the sequestration.  We have just really gone overboard.”

On the risks of devastating defense cuts:

• “We cut back after World War I… We cut back after World War II, after Korea, after Vietnam - it seems like it’s in our DNA that we cut back so that we are not prepared for the next confrontation, and that leads to the next confrontation.”

• “As you run down your ability, your strength, somebody is always going to be out there to take advantage of it.  I have seen us do this time and time again.  I have never seen us do this when we are at war.  This is the first time I’ve seen us do this when we have actually got troops going outside the wire every day in harm’s way.  It’s crazy.”

Congressman Randy Forbes (R-VA)
 
On the lack of strategy behind devastating cuts to defense:

• “This strategy is not the strategy of a superpower, this is a menu for mediocrity….  We’re going to see the dismantling of the greatest military [in] the world; not by some Goliath that rose up in some other part of the world, but by the thousand cuts that we sat back and just let take place.”

• “All of a sudden, we now have, truly, a strategy that’s being driven by the budget, not a budget that’s being driven by the strategy.”

• “We’re talking about the defense of this country pretty much as if it was some kind of a game at a table in a Vegas casino….  If we make a mistake and we miscalculate, we have no backstop because we’re the backstop of freedom in all the world.”

• “What they’re trying to now convince us is this: that somehow, there’s some grand but unexplainable new world strategy; which means that having fewer ships than your potential adversary,  having potentially fewer warheads than your potential enemy, having fewer planes than you need, and a drastically reduced force structure will somehow make us all safer, and make us all better.  You and I both know that’s not true.”

• “If we have these kind of cuts that took place, and if they are just a third of what they estimate, they will equal cuts that would be the same as all of the current unemployed people in West Virginia, New Mexico, Maine, Nebraska, Montana, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Delaware, Alaska, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming, and North Dakota combined.”

Congressman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

On the devastating impact of defense cuts:

• “… The base [defense] numbers are frightening… for those of us who are concerned about our nation’s security.  It would slash $487 billion from the military over the next ten years.  Our military could most likely survive one punch of that magnitude, but we’ve got the next $487 billion.  That is in addition to the $330 billion that was cut through 2010, and a potential $500 billion cut that would occur later this year through sequestration.  So, all total, we are looking at $1.3 trillion that would be cut to our nation’s defense when they are already operating on razor thin levels.”  

• “President Obama and I have very, very different interpretations of what it means to keep faith with our troops, with our military families, with our veterans.  The President’s definition is to give out pink slips to 80,000 soldiers."

• “If some of you are thinking that the Navy has been left out of this esteemed discussion, I would encourage you to have no fear.  The president’s budget is an equal opportunity force eliminator that cuts every single branch of the military.”

• “[T]he latest drone or military system can always be accelerated into development to meet the latest demands of war.  The same, however, cannot be said about our military’s leadership.  It takes time to properly recruit and develop our next class of military leaders.  It takes time.  It takes patience.  It takes endurance and dedication.”

 Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
 
On Obama’s initial $487 billion cut to defense spending over the next decade:

• “To come up with an arbitrary number doesn’t tell us what type of risks we are taking on….  Here’s where we are: we have a number that was come up with—completely on an arbitrary basis—to cut the Department of Defense by $487 billion, we know we are taking on additional risk, we have not received a risk assessment from the administration, so we really don’t know fully what risk and what choices we are making in terms of the security of the American people and our allies.  I will tell you that I don’t think that we should take one action on the Defense budget until we get that risk assessment, and know exactly what we’re getting into.”

• “I don’t think that our appropriators should decide to sign on to $487 billion in reductions until we can look the American people in the eye, and let them know what choices are being made here and what risks we’re putting them in.”

On using defense cuts to defer dealing with the real drivers of U.S. debt: 

• “Putting our Defense Department on the chopping block isn’t going to address this debt crisis in the way we need to.”

• “Let’s not forget, the fundamental purpose of why we have a government; enumerated in our Constitution….If we don’t have security, we don’t have anything else.”

 On the need for strong ground forces:  

• “We have a perfect record in predicting future conflicts: we’ve been perfectly wrong every time.  So, this notion that we are going to have a robust-enough ground force to meet future conflicts and contingencies, I seriously question.”

On the risks of defense cuts: 

• “The question for this administration is very clear: Does the defense budget make us safer? Does the defense budget address the risk that faces us? Are we needing cuts at a time when the risks haven’t been diminished? I think the answer is no, we’re not.”

• “I firmly believe that we should not put a national security crisis on top of a already existing fiscal crisis….  We can’t address this by thinking we’re going to cut our defense and put our country at risk.”

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
 
On the need to make the Pentagon more efficient while rolling back devastating defense cuts: 

• “I will fight with my last ounce of political being to make sure we don’t go down the sequestration route because it will destroy America’s defense, but I will work with this administration, Republicans and Democrats, to reform the way we appropriate and buy weapons systems.  I will put on the table premium adjustments for TRICARE….  And if get some retired E-6 or E-7 who’s having devastating medical problems, we will not increase their premiums.  But we need to look at a sustainable healthcare footprint in the Department of Defense budget.”

• “$487 billion is probably a bridge too far for me.”

On America’s role in the world: 

• “My view is that it’s the destiny of the United States and her people to lead the free world, and to be that shining light that Ronald Reagan described.  That is not something that I run away from, that’s something I embrace.”

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Transcript of remarks: Click Here

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The Defending Defense Coalition brings together the American Enterprise Institute, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and The Heritage Foundation to promote a sound understanding of the U.S. defense budget and the resource requirements necessary to sustain America's preeminent military position in a dangerous world. At this event, we will discuss the Obama administration’s FY 2013 defense budget and the broader context behind its new strategic guidance. As the Pentagon looks to cut $487 billion over the next decade, what capabilities and missions will America sacrifice? Does the budget reflect a strategy grounded in a true “pivot” to Asia? Is there an underlying strategic logic to the cuts? Please join us on Thursday, February 16th to discuss these issues.

This event was live-tweeted from @AEIFDP, @ForeignPolicyI, and @Heritage using the hashtag #DefendingDefense.