2011 defense budget request likely to shrink - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

2011 defense budget request likely to shrink

There no longer appears to be any doubt that Congress will reduce the 2011 defense budget.

It’s only a matter of deciding how much to cut.

The House Appropriations Committee voted Tuesday to trim $7 billion out of the Obama administration’s defense request, in the wake of an $8.1 billion cut approved last week by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

That doesn’t mean, however, that defense spending would decline from the current year.

Even with a $7 billion reduction, defense spending still would rise by $15.7 billion in 2011 over the 2010 budget.

These are only preliminary decisions, as the two powerful committees allocate money to their subcommittees to start the process of writing the 2011 federal budget. Details on what those reductions might mean for specific defense programs will not be known until the defense subcommittees begin writing their appropriations bills, which is not expected to happen until September.

Still, with the Senate committee talking about an $8.1 billion cut and the House panel recommending a $7 billion cut in the 2011 defense budget, a reduction in the defense request seems inevitable.

In both cases, cuts in defense make up the bulk of a larger $14 billion reduction in discretionary spending.

The House budget allocation spares only the Homeland Security Department and the combined Veterans Affairs Department and military construction budget requests from reductions. The Senate Appropriations Committee exempted only the VA and military construction budget.

In both the House and Senate committees, these were party-line votes, with Democrats voting for the $14 billion in reductions and Republicans voting against the cuts. There was a failed attempt in the House to restore the defense cut.