Last week, President Obama said cutting military spending by $1 trillion over the next 10 years goes too far. Referring to White House’s fiscal commission co-chaired by Erskine Bowles and former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson, Obama said of the $1 trillion figure:
There were aspects of Bowles-Simpson that I said from very early on were not the approach I would take. I’ll give you an example. On defense spending. … I think we need to cut defense, but as Commander-in-Chief, I’ve got to make sure that we’re cutting it in a way that recognizes we’re still in the middle of a war, we’re winding down another war, and we’ve got a whole bunch of veterans that we’ve got to care for as they come home.
However, yesterday on CBS’s Face The Nation, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), outlining his $9 trillion deficit reduction plan, said cutting the $1 trillion in military spending wouldn’t be too hard:
COBURN: We can save a trillion dollars at the Pentagon over the next ten years, not hard. It’s– it’s difficult, but it is not super hard. It’s common sense.
Watch it:
Coburn’s right. It’s not that hard. CAP’s Larry Korb, Laura Conley and Alex Rothman recently outlined how the U.S. government can “save $400 billion through 2015 without harming U.S. national security.”
In addition to Simpson-Bowles, other debt and deficit reduction task forces have recommended reducing military spending by at least $1 trillion over the next decade as well, a move which would, as Korb notes, “bring defense levels back to the Cold War average in inflation adjusted dollars.”
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