The Hill News

All eyes this week are on incoming Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, whose predecessor departed from business-as-usual to suggest the Pentagon should not be immune from budget scrutiny. Even the mere suggestion that the military should not be given carte blanche represents a colossal step forward in the country’s fiscal discussion, but Secretary Robert Gates has set the bar on the defense spending debate by suggesting the President’s plan to cut $400 billion over twelve years represents what will be a paradigm shift on military budgets. 

It should be stated that for anyone but the Pentagon this would not be considered a particularly tall order. Pentagon spending is expected to total over $6 trillion in the next ten years, and that’s assuming current policy disengaging from the Middle East.

Enjoying a 65 percent increase in its base budget over the last decade, the Department of Defense is a notorious home for political favoritism and wasteful spend! ing. This casts downward pressure on spending on legitimate national security causes, a constraint Secretary Gates spent his last few days as the acting chief Pentagon official warning against. His departure, and Leon Panetta’s ascendance to the position, marks an opportunity to reform the taxpayer munificence bestowed upon the Pentagon at a cost of over a trillion over the last decade.

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