Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 03/2013

How Much Austerity in New Pentagon Budget?

Carl Conetta, Charles Knight

February 2012

Project on Defense Alternatives

Abstract

The table below compares the President’s requested budget authority for the Pentagon “base budget” in two successive budgets: the FY-2012 and the FY-2013 budgets. It shows the change in future spending plans. The comparable years are 2012-2021 and comparing these shows that planned spending has been rolled back by nearly $490 billion. This is a subtraction from last year’s plan and not from the CBO baseline, however.