By Roderick Miller –<\/p>\n
The bipartisan congressional \u201csuper committee\u201d officially failed in its task of negotiating $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction measures, emerging from months of deliberations with no deal in hand as of the deadline. As specified in the legislation that created the super committee, the committee\u2019s failure to reach an agreement will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts. Those cuts will be drawn equally from defense and domestic spending, and, barring further congressional action, will come into effect in January 2013.<\/p>\n
Accounting for projected interest savings, the Pentagon\u2019s actual share of the automatic cuts would be $500 billion over a span of 10 years. However, this reduction would be in addition to the $350 billion in defense cuts that are already mandated by last summer\u2019s debt limit agreement. Given a baseline Defense Department budget of $700 billion for fiscal year 2011, these mandatory spending reductions will require significant slashes to the Defense Department\u2019s budgets for years to come.<\/p>\n
U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta condemned the debt commission\u2019s failure to reach a deal, warning that<\/a> \u201c[i]f Congress fails to act over the next year, the Department of Defense will face devastating, automatic, across-the-board cuts that will tear a seam in the nation’s defense.\u201d Panetta cautioned that the additional cuts would result in a \u201chollow force incapable of sustaining the missions it is assigned.\u201d Further emphasizing the price of Congressional inaction, Panetta asserted<\/a> that \u201csequester would also\u00a0jeopardize our ability to provide our troops and their families with the benefits and the support they have been promised. Our troops deserve better and our nation demands better.\u201d<\/p>\n Republican lawmakers have been quick to respond to the super committee\u2019s failure with vows to undo or minimize the mandatory defense cuts. Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, indicated that he would introduce legislation to repeal the defense cuts. \u201cI will not be the armed services chairman who presides over crippling our military,\u201d he said<\/a>. Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have also signaled that they are working on a plan to mitigate the effect of automatic cuts on the Pentagon\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n In preemptive response to such proposals, President Barack Obama has vowed to veto any attempt to disarm the sequestration mechanism without first achieving the agreed upon deficit reductions. \u00a0Admonishing Congress, he said<\/a> \u201c[t]here will be no easy offramps on this one. We need to keep the pressure up to compromise, not turn off the pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n