Thursday, September 30, 2010

A World Wide Trend To Cut Defense Budgets (Maybe)

Sign of Changing Times: U.S. Senate Panel Trims 2011 Defense Appropriations Bill -- Defense News

As spending cuts go, the $8 billion that U.S. Senate appropriators trimmed from next year's defense spending bill wasn't much - a little more than 1 percent off the $678 billion requested by President Barack Obama.

But to many who monitor defense budgets closely, the fact that the defense budget was cut at all was more significant than the amount. The action by the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee shows that there is "a bipartisan push to cut defense," said Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Read more ....

My Comment: The paragraph that caught my attention was the following ....

"Absent any new conflict, by 2015 the base defense budget by then looks to be in the $750 billion to $800 billion range." That includes more than $50 billion a year that will be needed to pay for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, Kiley said. "We are not leaving the Gulf entirely anytime soon."

An $800 billion Defense budget .... hmmmm .... I doubt it.

The U.S. is not the only country cutting its defense budgets .... check the stories here.

Update: No Cuts Now, HASC Tells DoD -- DoD Buzz

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