Baker Spring on FY2011 Defense Budget Cuts
On February 1, 2010, the Obama Administration released its defense budget proposal as part of its fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget request.[1] The defense budget proposal contains three components:
• A $33 billion supplemental appropriation to support overseas contingency operations (OCO) during the current fiscal year;
• A detailed FY 2011 budget request for the core defense program and OCO funding; and
• An outline of defense spending levels for FY 2010 through FY 2015.
The Administration proposes spending $738.7 billion on defense in FY 2011: $159.3 billion on OCO and $579.4 billion on the core defense program. The Administration’s proposal lacks a detailed description of the spending projections for FY 2012 through FY 2015, except that it estimates annual OCO spending at $50 billion annually.
The most important of the proposal’s three components is the spending outline for FY 2010 through FY 2015 because it reveals the future trend of the overall defense budget. This trend line clearly shows that the resources provided to the military will not be sufficient to maintain America’s long-standing security commitments to the American people and to U.S. allies and friends. These commitments include, for example, defending the American people against attack, preserving freedom of the high seas, and preventing a hostile power from dominating Europe.
Congress has a constitutional duty to use its power of the purse to fill the gaps that the Obama Administration’s defense budget would otherwise expose.
A Delayed Draconian Cut
Under the Obama Administration’s current budget outline, total defense spending is expected to decline from $722.1 billion in FY 2010 to $698.2 billion (in current dollars) in FY 2015. As a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), total defense spending would fall from about 4.9 percent in FY 2010 to roughly 3.6 percent in FY 2015. (See Chart 1.)
In 2009, the Obama Administration’s budget outline had recommended a draconian cut in the FY 2011 defense budget. The good news is that the Administration has flinched, proposing a FY 2011 budget of $738.7 billion–$118 billion more that it had proposed in last year’s budget. The bad news is that this merely delays the draconian cut. Under the budget outline in the FY 2011 budget, the FY 2012 defense budget would drop roughly $92 billion below the proposed FY 2011 level. This cut is the most important factor contributing to the negative trend of defense spending declining as a percentage of GDP.
This planned cut directly affects the core defense program, which funds the military capabilities needed to uphold U.S. security commitments into the future. The core defense program is slated to decline from 3.8 percent of GDP in FY 2010 to less than 3.4 percent in FY 2015. (See Chart 1.) According to the Administration’s budget outline of a year ago, the core defense budget will continue declining after FY 2015, approaching 3 percent of GDP by FY 2019.
Read the full text of Baker Spring’s article at Heritage.
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