The CR for the most part continues spending at the fiscal 2012 level, but based on an agreement among the House, the Senate and the White House, it contains an across-the-board increase of 0.6 percent. Overall discretionary spending is $26.6 billion less than this year. That’s primarily because of a $32 billion reduction in fiscal 2013 projected costs for Afghanistan and other overseas military-related operations.
The Defense Department so far appears to have done well. While it represents more than half of the country’s discretionary spending, the CR projects $519 billion for fiscal 2013 defense spending, a figure higher than amounts approved so far by the House or Senate.
The country, however, is far from out of the woods. Beyond the CR looms sequestration, the across-the-board reductions of some 10 percent a year in all discretionary spending if Congress — by the end of this year — does not come up with a plan for $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions over the next 10 years. That could be done by program cuts or increased revenue, or a mixture of both. That’s the law approved by a bipartisan vote in Congress and signed by President Obama last year with the passage of the Budget Control Act (BCA).
How Congress deals with sequestration will depend on who wins the November presidential election. As the campaign has vividly shown, seemingly irreconcilable differences remain between Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, between Democrats and Republicans.
Take defense spending. Obama’s plans are laid out in the Pentagon budget delivered to Congress and in testimony before congressional committees.
Romney and congressional Republicans, meanwhile, continue to accuse Obama of reducing defense spending by $1 trillion over the next 10 years. Here’s the math for their claim: They add the congressionally approved $487 billion from the BCA with $500 billion more that would emerge if sequestration happens.
But forget reducing spending when it comes to the Romney plan for defense. Obama has called for reducing U.S. troop levels by 100,000 over five years as U.S. combat forces leave Afghanistan. The start of those reductions in the Army and Marine Corps are already in the Pentagon’s 2013 budget and future plans, but Romney wants to do an about-face. He wants to increase force levels by 100,000. That could cost an additional $20 billion a year, or $200 billion over the next 10 years.
He also has said that he wants to step up U.S. Navy shipbuilding, from nine vessels a year to 15. It costs roughly $18 billion for the current pace of nine ships a year. The Romney plan would add an additional $12 billion, or more than $120 billion to defense spending over the next 10 years.
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