Doomsday Projections

The Pentagon’s $553 billion budget request for Fiscal 2012 is likely to get chopped by $28 billion due to the recently enacted Budget Control Act of 2011, according to Todd Harrison, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in a new brief. That’s $5 billion less than the Defense Department’s Fiscal 2011 spending level, he said. The legislation includes a “doomsday mechanism” that would go into effect for Fiscal 2013 and beyond if the new Joint Committee of Senators and House members established under the act can’t reach an agreement on further federal budget cuts, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters last week during his first press briefing. If that happened, DOD would face “a further round of very dangerous cuts across the board,” said Panetta. Such reductions “would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our military’s ability to protect the nation,” he warned. Continue