CIAO DATE: 02/2012
January 2012
Project on Defense Alternatives
Despite the hyperbole surrounding it, the proposal to roll back the DoD budget plan for 2013- 2017 by $260 billion, asserted by Defense Secretary Panetta last fall, doesn’t amount to much of a reduction from recent spending levels – about 4 percent in real terms. The roll back does appear more significant when measured against the administration’s earlier spending plans for 2013-2017. But that’s only because those earlier plans had aimed to continue the real growth in the Pentagon’s base budget that had been underway since 1998.
Resource link: Keep Pentagon Cuts in Perspective: What the administration proposes is hardly dramatic [PDF] - 508K