White House puts a $527 billion 'limit', excluding war costs on Defense Budget

[bigtree]

Feb. 2, 2009

The Obama administration has given the Pentagon a $527 billion limit, excluding war costs, for its fiscal 2010 defense budget, an official with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget said Monday.

If enacted, that would be an 8 percent increase from the $487.7 billion allocated for fiscal 2009, and it would match what the Bush administration estimated last year for the Pentagon in fiscal 2010. But it sets up a potential conflict between the new administration and the Defense Department’s entrenched bureaucracy, which has remained largely intact through the presidential transition.

Some Pentagon officials and congressional conservatives are already trying to portray the OMB number as a cut by comparing it to a $584 billion draft fiscal 2010 budget request compiled last fall by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The $527 billion figure is “what the Bush people thought was the right number last February and that’s the number we’re going with,” said the OMB official, who declined to be identified. “The Joint Chiefs did that to lay down a marker for the incoming administration that was unrealistic. It’s more of a wish list than anything else.”

Defense budget experts have said the draft by the Joint Chiefs, which was never publicly released, was designed to pressure the Obama administration to drastically increase defense spending or be forced to defend a reluctance to do so. Defense officials in past outgoing administrations have left inflated budget estimates for incoming officials in the hope of raising the spending baseline. In fact, the draft budget was never scrubbed by Bush’s OMB, which had told federal agencies to submit draft budgets based on “current services.”

read: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=cqmidday-000003022552

[blueclown]

1. Another increase in the defense budget?

Good grief.

The budget should be going up, not down.

[bigtree]

12. 8% increase

yep.

[Donnachaidh]

2. Give them an increase while publicizing it as a LIMIT

Now that is SPIN in all it's glory. :sarcasm:

And we thought the repukes had a lock on that sort of nonsense. :eyes:

[bigtree]

13. I don't think that was the WH's intention

I think they want to make certain they don't cut below what the Bush budget contemplated. Still screwy, but not an attempt to make their budget look like a reduction. To the contrary, they probably want to insulate against right-wing charges they made some kind of risky reductions.

[blueclown]

14. Who cares what the right-wing noise machine thinks?

The President said he wanted to cut government waste on the campaign trail. The defense budget is a good start.

[bigtree]

19. Apparently the folks the OMB person hangs with care about the politics

. . . we'll see where this ends up - whether there's any push and shove to alter this figure, up or down.

[blueclown]

20. We all care about politics.

WTF does that have to do with the defense budget?

[bigtree]

21. um

. . . there are politicians managing it. Someone in the administration is considering the political obstacles to the bill's passage. It's a vulnerable process because the political lean on defense in Congress is usually conservative, Democrats as well.

The attitude from Pres. Obama on Defense has been a cautious deference to the existing structure, that includes appropriations. He's promised reform, and I'd expect that reform to reveal itself in a lessening of the previous administration's priorities and a reversal and reorganization of projects and acquisitions. I'm just not sure he's prepared to make all of that happen in this first budget.

That's not what I wanted, but it was clear from the start of the transition that he intended to keep the Pentagon leadership from the last administration in place while he sorted all of it out. If you accept that he has an ambition to make a 'clear change' in the Defense budget, you could say he's settling in slow; getting his feet wet; getting a feel for the controls. That includes adjusting to the appropriations hurdles in Congress and the political realities which surround the budget process.

[Donnachaidh]

16. People wanted the non-stop spending on war to, at the least, slow down

Giving them an INCREASE doesn't fall into that category.

If this had been put out by a Republican administration, folks on this board would be all over it because of the spin. So it's different now because -- ???

Spin is spin, regardless of who wrote it.

[bigtree]

18. I'm not defending it

. . . just trying to respond to your thought that the WH was trying to misrepresent the increase.

As for what Obama promised, I agree that this isn't the direction many folks who voted for him might have expected.

[Astrad]

3. What a misleading headline!

Should be "White House Defense budget increase in line with Bush administration plans."

[blueclown]

4. Is the Obama administration writing these headlines?

The spin is making me dizzy.

[bigtree]

11. the 'limit' (excluding war costs) is the WH's assertion

. . . 'according to an official with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.'

here's the original headline: 'White House Draws Line on Defense Budget'

The truth is obviously being obscured here by the politics.

[geek tragedy]

5. Economy contracts, defense budget explodes.

Is this the early 1980's?

[catnhatnh]

6. Fuck'em....

Take back the 8% and give them the exact same COLA we gave social security recipients....after all, a lot of us were military too.

[ContinentalOp]

7. "excluding war costs"

so not only is this "limit" actually an increase, but it's also a totally open-ended, meaningless number!

[Greyhound]

9. That pretty well sums it up. n/t

[bigtree]

15. I thought they were going to move away from the 'supplementals'

[Mari333]

8. Thats NOT change. Thats just bullshit. n/t

[Winterblues]

10. I am getting more disillusioned every day

My hopes were for less war and more Liberal Policies for America. Everything is going the exact opposite. No Health Care in near future according to Senator Schumar. Give Republicans everything they want for the sake of nonpartisanship.. I know McCain would not have been any better but I did have higher hopes.

[ColbertWatcher]

17. 8% increase? Isn't the cost of living increase around 7%?

As long as they start using that money for body armor and MRAPs and training.