When the Obama administration announced its new military strategy last month, and the correlating proposed spending reductions, conservatives tried to claim, in the words of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), that the President was trying to “gut the military.” But as CAP’s Larry Korb, Alex Rothman and Max Hoffman write in a new report today, President Obama’s defense budget “does little to bring the baseline budget back down from its current level, which remains near historic highs.” Indeed, the New York Times noted last month that “over the next four years, the Pentagon budget would rise each year, reaching $567 billion by 2017.”

But you might not know that by scanning the Wall Street Journal’s new budget analysis. According to one graphic, the Journal suggests that military spending will decline over the next few years:

While it may be true that military spending will decline as a percentage of GDP, framing the military budget in these terms hides the fact that defense spending will increase in the coming years. Why? As the aforementioned CAP report explains, “Because these ‘cuts’ come from projected increases in defense spending.” As such, “the baseline defense budget will fall by just 1 percent, or $5 billion, next year and resume its growth thereafter.” Here is what a chart of projected military spending actually looks like:

Korb, Rothman and Hoffman offer a number of “next steps” the Pentagon can take to trim more fat, including reducing F-35 procurement, cancelling the V-22 Osprey, shrinking the size of the nuclear arsenal and reducing the size of the carrier fleet from nine to eleven.

A group of Senators led by Arizona Republicans John McCain and Jon Kyl today unveiled a bill to try to prevent nearly $500 billion in cuts to military spending, which were mandated after the congressional debt commission’s super committee failed to agree on where to trim $1.2 trillion from the federal budget.

Their plan calls for delaying the implementation of the mandatory spending cuts one year (in to 2014) in order to figure out how to offset the reductions. The Republicans don’t plan on raising taxes however. Instead, they want to cut federal jobs and freeze federal workers’ pay, Reuters reports:

The new proposal by McCain, Kyl and four other Senate Republicans would spare the military and selected domestic programs of cuts set to go into effect in January 2013. The $127 billion in budget savings would be achieved, instead, by scaling back the federal workforce and freezing its pay.

The move is designed to buy time for lawmakers to decide on more orderly reductions than the across-the-board cuts put in place after a special congressional committee failed to develop a deficit reduction plan last year, a Republican aide said.

“Let’s not let a domestic issue such as tax increases interfere…with our nation’s security,” McCain said at the bill’s unveiling on Capitol Hill today. In fact, the military can more than afford the extra $500 billion in cuts. Not only has the U.S. defense budget doubled in the last 10 years, the U.S. spends more than the next 14 countries combined. Indeed, as Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said, “it’s difficult, but it is not super hard” to make the reductions.

Democrats, however, balked at the plan. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called the bill “unfair.” Referring to the fact that McCain and many of his GOP colleagues had indeed voted for the plan that ended up resulting in the sequester cuts, Reid added, “I believe that an agreement is an agreement. I believe that a handshake is a handshake. Here we have more than a handshake – we have a law that is in place in our country. They should keep their word. That’s what the American people expect them to do, and that’s what I expect them to do.”

Last November, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) earned his keep as the top congressional recipient of defense industry campaign contributions fiercely fighting back against military spending cuts and claiming that defense expenditures are the the only form of government spending that can create jobs. McKeon’s unique pro-defense industry fiscal policy was so appreciated by defense contractors that it appears they are throwing their financial weight behind his wife’s campaign for a seat in the California Assembly.

Lee Fang reports that Patricia McKeon received at least $19,200 in contributions from defense contractors or their registered lobbyists in her first few months of fundraising. McKeon’s run for the California assembly occurs as defense contractors are working to mitigate impending defense budget cuts which could affect their bottom line.

The influx of funding from defense contractors for a California State Assembly campaign doesn’t make much sense from an influence peddling standpoint as Patricia McKeon’s most high profile campaign plank has been to call for an end to plastic bag taxes [PDF]. But the campaign contributions overlap with her husband’s efforts to protect the defense industry from his perch as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Fang writes:

Lockheed Martin, a company locked in a pitched battle to stave off cuts to the lucrative F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet, cut Patricia McKeon’s campaign a $3,000 check.

Rep. Buck McKeon has rigorously defended the jets, despite growing concerns that the planes will run almost $90 million over budget each.

Donors such as Max Valente, a D.C. defense lobbyist who had already maxed out in contributions to McKeon’s congressional campaign, contributed to Patricia McKeon’s campaign in his only campaign contribution to a state politician.

Fang adds that Patricia McKeon has benefited financially from Buck McKeon’s campaign committee — since 2001 she was paid over $547,584 — but she now appears to have tapped her husband’s cash flush supporters in the defense industry for her own foray into elected politics.

On HBO’s Real Time Friday night, host Bill Maher said the Republicans “were such sour pusses” during President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week. “Just in your own self interest, wouldn’t it be good to fake it when he’s talking about American succeses?” Maher wondered. Panelist Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) told Maher why the Republicans were in such a foul mood:

ROHRABACHER: Here we have a president of the United States who is just profusely saying how wonderful he thinks of the military and we know, all of us who are sitting in the audience, he’s trying to gut the military!

Maher, co-panelists Kennedy from Reason TV, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir and even the audience joined in to collectively chastise the California Republican for his blatantly false claim. “That’s absolutely not true,” Kennedy said, later adding, “I love the military. I like my SEALs groomed and ready to go but you have to tell the truth.”

“Can I give you the facts?” Maher asked Rohrabacher. “So far every budget Obama has had has increased military spending,” he said. “This year they’re asking a reduction from $531 billion to $525 billion, 1.6 percent. You mean our freedom is in trouble because of that 1.6 percent?” Maher later added, “How paranoid do you have to be to say that this guy is gutting our military?” Watch the clip:

Of course, Maher, Kennedy, Bashir (and the audience) are right, Obama is not gutting the military, not even close. And while the Obama administration has outlined a plan to reduce military spending by nearly $500 billion over the next 10 years, that figure is taken from levels of projected spending. As the New York Times noted this week, “over the next four years, the Pentagon budget would rise each year, reaching $567 billion by 2017.” The Times adds that “adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget over the next five years.”

Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said the cuts to past projections for military spending were “tough” and “real,” and said they “obviously will cause some pain.” The cuts, as Center for American Progress analysts Lawrence Korb, Max Hoffman and Alex Rothman wrote today, constitute a “positive first step and a major achievement. It will be the first real reduction in baseline defense spending in more than a decade.” But more needs to be done: “[T]here is a long way to go to reach sustainable levels of defense spending and bring the Pentagon budget back in line with historical norms.”

First the hard numbers: The reductions to projected spending resulted from what Panetta called “mandated savings” in his Pentagon presser, imposed by Congress in the Budget Control Act.

The upcoming year’s Pentagon baseline budget will indeed be smaller than this year’s — by $6 billion, representing about a 1.1 percent reduction from 2012′s $531 budget. But, as the L.A. Times notes:

[O]ver the next four years, the Pentagon budget would rise each year, reaching $567 billion by 2017. In inflated adjusted dollars, spending is essentially flat, Pentagon projections show.

The Pentagon budget will actually be rising in nominal terms. In 2017, the Pentagon will be spending $36 billion more than this year. That’s an average 2 percent increase over five years. However, the New York Times adds that “adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget over the next five years.” (The numbers exclude spending on the Afghanistan war, which is appropriated separately and expected to drop from $115 billion this year to $88 billion next year.)

Making good on Panetta’s commitment “not to hollow out the force,” McClatchy notes that the Pentagon’s “planned reduction in ground forces by 2017 would still leave a larger military than before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The Center for American Progress analysts also took into account the end of the Iraq war and, coming within three years, the end of the Afghanistan war:

Unfortunately, we have done nothing to roll back more than a decade of continuous growth in military spending, despite the end of the war in Iraq and the beginning of our drawdown in Afghanistan.

They wrote that the cuts to proposed spending “represent a small step toward a more reasonable, sustainable strategic stance,” but merely kick the can down the road on other “hard choices the Pentagon must face over the coming years.”

Last June, during hearings to confirm his nomination as defense secretary, Leon Panetta, then CIA director, said the military’s budget plays no role in the federal budget deficit:

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): Do you agree with [Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates when he said that the defense budget no matter how large it may be is not the cause of the fiscal woes?

PANETTA: I agree with that. It is by no means the cause of the huge deficits we are incurring today.

At a press conference today announcing the Pentagon’s new budget, it seems Panetta finally came around to the reality that military spending and defense budgets impact the deficit. The new budget “does something about reducing the deficit and achieving savings,” he said:

PANETTA: So the reason you’re seeing the tough decisions that are being presented to you in the implementation of the strategy is because we had to achieve savings that would meet the requirement that Congress gave us. And that is tough. It’s real and it’s something that obviously will cause some pain, but at the same time we recognize that defense has to play a role in dealing with the national deficit.

Watch clips from the press conference:

Today’s Panetta is right. While the Pentagon’s budget alone is not the only deficit driver, military spending makes up 50 percent of the discretionary portion of the federal budget. And defense spending has accounted for 65 percent of the discretionary spending increase since 2001. Total defense spending in real dollars is now higher than at any time since World War II, and DOD’s baseline budget nearly doubled in the last 10 years.

While Panetta’s new budget does reduce military spending over the next 10 years by nearly $500 billion, the defense budget, as the defense secretary acknowledged today, will still grow. The reductions he laid out today are cuts in projected increases in DOD spending.

With the ink barely dry on her contract, Liz Cheney took up her new role as a Fox News contributor in an interview with Fox and Friends‘ Eric Bolling. Cheney came out swinging, telling viewers that President Obama’s proposed cuts to military spending would damage the U.S. military in ways that the Taliban and al Qaeda had been unable:

ERIC BOLLING: Let’s talk about these drastic cuts in military [sic]. Weigh in on that. Do we become a much more vulnerable nation?

LIZ CHENEY: There’s no question. I think in fact what President Obama is doing is something that America’s enemies — the Taliban and Al Qaeda — have been unable to do, which is to decimate the fighting capability of this nation.

Cheney went on to conflate Iraq and Iran — asserting that “Iraq is months, not years, away” from enriching the uranium required for a nuclear weapon — and claimed that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey hadn’t clearly stated that the U.S. would respond militarily if Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Watch it:

Indeed, Obama proposed a $487 billion cut to military spending, but Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey told a Duke University audience yesterday, “This is something we the Joint Chiefs have endorsed as best for America.” He did not comment on whether the cuts in defense spending would serve the interests of the Taliban and al Qaeda but he also said last week that the military’s leadership is supportive of Obama’s plan and, not as Liz Cheney suggests, suffering a “decimat[ion]” of their fighting capability.

Cheney also got it wrong on the statements issued by Dempsey about the Strait of Hormuz. Yesterday, the New York Times reported:

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this past weekend that the United States would “take action and reopen the strait,” which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and potentially airstrikes. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told troops in Texas on Thursday that the United States would not tolerate Iran’s closing of the strait.

While Cheney is broadening her professional credentials, her debut appearance as a Fox News contributor showed her as a commentator who pays very little attention to the administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s actual positions on the issues she covers.

Last week, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) said that President Obama didn’t consult with the military when formulating the new global strategy he announced last week. “I have heard some rumination” that Obama ignored military leaders, West said (of course this is not true).

The next day, talking with right-wing radio host Mark Levin, West went a bit further, saying that military commanders should consider whether or not they follow the president’s orders:

LEVIN: Seems to me if I’m one of the highest ranking generals or admiral in the Navy, and this was being done to my force structure – that is, to my men and women in uniform, I might think about stepping out. You know what I mean? Moving on to another career.

WEST: I absolutely understand what you’re saying. And you know I’ve had a lot of people ask me about that because the responsibility of our senior generals has to be to the men and women in uniform. They have to be very careful about blindly following a commander in chief that really does not have the best intent for our military. And I think that when you understand that President Obama said he was going to fundamentally transform the United States of America, you’re seeing him destroy our economy, and now you’re seeing him destroy our military capability.

Levin stepped in and tried to save West. “What we’re saying so you’re liberal haters don’t screw this up,” Levin said, “we’re saying is they should consider stepping down.” “Well yeah,” West responded, “What you’re saying and what I’m saying is that your silence is consent.” Check out the clip here:

Of course, military leaders are constitutionally bound to follow the president’s orders, unless they are illegal. Otherwise, failure to do so without resignation “shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”