The chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee is warning against indiscriminate cuts in defense spending without a national security review to inform any budget reductions.
“If you are going to do it responsibly, that’s what you do instead of throwing out a number,” California Republican Howard P. “Buck” McKeon told reporters in Washington yesterday. “You’d have some kind of idea of what the impact of that number would be.”
President Barack Obama signed a measure into law on Aug. 2 that calls for trimming $350 billion from planned defense spending over 10 years. The law calls for a special congressional supercommittee to find $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction throughout the federal government.
McKeon said he is concerned that $350 billion is “high in and of itself.” He said he would fight to stave off any deeper cuts than that.
Armed Services committee staff members have already been working with the supercommittee to lay out the impact of defense cuts, McKeon said.
“There is a danger of a bidding war downward without understanding what the consequences are going to be,” said Representative Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican, who also spoke at the press event. Thornberry is a member of the armed services panel.
If Congress fails to act on the special committee’s recommendations, the deal calls for an automatic cut of an additional $500 billion in defense spending, not including interest.
‘Doomsday Mechanism’
McKeon said he has been communicating with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who has raised alarm over what he called a “doomsday mechanism” that would trigger the additional $500 billion in defense cuts.
Panetta “has reached out more than I would have expected,” McKeon said. “He does not want to be the secretary that hollows out the military.”
McKeon’s panel, as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee and the appropriations panel are expected to submit their recommendations to the supercommittee by mid-October.
