By Christopher Preble
While most news stories have accurately characterized the Obama administration’s proposed military spending cuts as “modest,” the Pentagon is planning significant reductions in the number of active-duty troops in the …
Civilian Personnel: The Missing Piece in the Pentagon’s Budget Puzzle is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Benjamin H. Friedman
The changes announced in the Pentagon’s new budget guidance are, from my perspective, mostly good news, but woefully insufficient. They show how even limited austerity encourages prioritization among weapons systems …
The New Pentagon Budget: Better, but Not Great is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Christopher Preble
It was clever, though a bit too opportunistic, for the president to begin and end his State of the Union address with references to Iraq, and the sacrifices of the troops. The war has been a disaster for the United States, and for the Iraqi people, of course. But the subject has always been a [...]
Obama’s State of the Union Signals Grand Strategy Status Quo is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Christopher Preble
The GOP presidential candidates will participate in yet another debate tonight from South Carolina in anticipation of the primary there on Saturday. I hope that the moderator, CNN’s John King, will bring up some of the major national security issues at hand, namely military spending. Out of all the GOP contenders, it is clear that [...]
Tonight on Stossel: Ron Paul, War, and Military Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Christopher Preble
As David Boaz recently demonstrated, the jeremiads emanating from Washington over proposed cuts in military spending are unfounded. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon’s op-ed in today’s Washington Post is only the latest to decry the “damaging blow to our military” that will be done by “massive defense cuts.” Not only is Pentagon spending not at its [...]
Setting the Record Straight on Military Spending Levels is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By David Boaz
The Washington Examiner ran this Heritage Foundation chart on January 10 under the title (not online) “Defense spending at lowest levels in 60 years”: Dramatic, eh? It shows defense spending plunging for the past 40 or more years. Except . . . wait a minute . . . has defense spending plunged? This chart from [...]
Misleading Images on Defense Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Benjamin H. Friedman
There’s more to the Pentagon’s new strategy than the emperor’s new clothes, but barely. It’s hardly new and not particularly strategic. The document justifies a minor defense budget cut. The Obama administration wants to grow military spending at a pace slightly less than projected inflation for a decade. If we assume that plan stays in [...]
Too Much Ado about the Pentagon’s New Strategy is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Christopher Preble
President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey are scheduled to brief the media tomorrow morning on the recently completed strategic review that will inform the Pentagon’s budget priorities for the coming five to ten years. Early indications suggest that the status quo will hold. And that is bad news for [...]
What the Pentagon’s New Military Strategy Should Look Like is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Christopher Preble
The New York Times has posted a handy tool for calculating savings from the Pentagon’s budget over the next ten years. I went through the exercise, and my plan resulted in cuts of $1.144 trillion over ten years. Had I checked all of the boxes in the Times’s calculator, it would have generated savings of up [...]
A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Cutting the Military Budget is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Benjamin H. Friedman
Both Houses have now passed the 2012 Defense Authorization Bill. The president, having dropped his veto threat, will sign it today. That’s too bad. Authorization bills, keep in mind, are essentially a collection of restrictions and permissions slips for appropriations. In practice, however, budgeteers and appropriators have more say over how we spend. So while [...]
The Defense Authorization Bill: Still Troubled is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
