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<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=281423221-03082011>Good info. Lee/Mom/Cuz</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=281423221-03082011></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=281423221-03082011>(Connie, if you don't want this kind of email dooooo
let me know! Hugs, Lee)</SPAN></FONT></DIV><BR>
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<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> Lee Loe [mailto:leeloe@igc.org]
<BR><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, August 02, 2011 11:23 PM<BR><B>To:</B> 'Lee
Loe'<BR><B>Subject:</B> cutting Pentagon Budget<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"><STRONG>II</STRONG>) <B>Summary:</B><BR><B><A
href="outbind://32/#August2t1">U.S./Top News</A></B> <SPAN
class=437592104-03082011><FONT face=Arial size=2> William Hartung, Huffington
Post</FONT></SPAN><BR>1) The good news is that the Pentagon budget is finally on
the table in deficit reduction talks, writes William Hartung in the Huffington
Post. But it will take a lot more work to ensure that it is truly reduced. The
reductions being proposed now are being measured against the Pentagon's
hoped-for rate of growth, not against current spending levels. So numbers that
may sound like big cuts may not actually be cuts at all - they could just be
reductions in the rate of growth. <BR><BR>In the first round, the deficit
reduction package calls for $350 billion in reductions in "defense spending"
over the next decade, which would still allow the Pentagon budget to grow faster
than inflation, Hartung writes. But then there is another round of cuts, to be
determined by a congressional commission charged with coming up with an
additional $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. <BR><BR>The
challenge will be to transform this opportunity into real cuts along the lines
suggested by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, the Domenici-Rivlin task force,
the report of the president's deficit commission, the Cato Institute, the
Stimson Center, the Center for American Progress and other independent analysts.
These proposals call for reductions in Pentagon spending ranging from $400
billion over five years to $1.4 trillion over ten years. [Thus, essentially the
entire deficit reduction could be achieved with military cuts - JFP.]<BR><BR>2)
The first fiscal year of the debt deal reduces "security" spending $4.5 billion
below the FY 2011 level, writes Laicie Olson for the Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation. While this is a small cut, it would represent the first time
in recent years that "security" spending has actually gone down, rather than
merely being reduced from previously projected increases. <BR><BR>3) What McKeon
and other defense hawks are really worried about is the trigger mechanism, which
would automatically cut $600 billion from the base defense budgets over 10 years
if the new joint committee can't make a deal on $1.2 trillion of additional
cuts, writes Josh Rogin in Foreign Policy. After "mechanical adjustments," which
are ways to predict the real value of the cuts considering other factors, that
$600 billion cut is estimated by the administration to actually be about $534
billion.<BR><BR>If you add the $350 billion in defense cuts announced by the
White House as part of today's deal with the $534 billion in defense cuts in the
trigger mechanism, it totals $884 billion. That number is close to the $886
billion in defense cuts proposed in the plan put forth by the Senate's
bipartisan budget group the Gang of Six, which President Obama has already
endorsed, Rogin notes.<BR><BR>4) As a result of the trigger mechanism,
Republican defense hawks may face a choice between tax increases and cutting
military spending, the New York Times reports. Tea Party-allied Republicans
might not mind, the Times notes, since many would like to see a smaller
government across the board and a less expensive US presence around the
world.<BR><BR>5) The prospect of $600 billion in additional defense cuts over
the next decade is enough to compel the U.S. military to make big changes to its
global strategy, the Washington Post reports. "You could reasonably make those
cuts as long as you were willing to rethink our military strategy, not allow for
any sacred cows and cut ruthlessly," said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an influential defense think
tank with close ties to the Pentagon.<BR><BR>To find $1 trillion in savings, the
White House would have to make major changes to its current global military
strategy, under which the Pentagon should be able to fight two wars like Iraq
and Afghanistan simultaneously, the Post notes. Scaling back that requirement
would allow for big cuts to the Army and Marine Corps, which collectively have
grown by about 92,000 men and women since 2001 and would probably have to shrink
at a minimum to pre-2001 levels. In shrinking the force, Congress would be
betting that the Afghan war will wind down as planned and that the country will
not be drawn into any big, costly counterinsurgency wars in the next 10 to 15
years.<BR><BR>6) Spending more than $200 billion over the next ten years to
rebuild the U.S. nuclear arsenal can no longer be justified in the
post-budget-deal era, writes Tom Collina of the Arms Control Association in The
Hill. The Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration
plan to use this $200 billion to build a new generation of submarines, bombers
and missiles for the nuclear "triad," upgrade the nuclear warheads they carry,
and rebuild the warhead factories. One of the Senate's most conservative
Republicans, Tom Coburn, recently called for cutting $79 billion from the U.S.
nuclear weapons budget over the next decade, Collina
notes.</FONT></FONT><B><BR><BR></B></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>