Fuzzy Logic and Shell Games

Thanks to Bill in DC

In The Pentagon's New Math Lawrence J. Korb explains that "budget cuts" at the Pentagon are not cuts at all but are nothing but a shell game.

Washington -- BECAUSE of the cost of the war in Iraq and the mounting federal deficit, the Office of Management and Budget has ordered the Pentagon to make major budget cuts over the next six years. According to the Pentagon, these could come to more than $55 billion and will affect almost all major weapons programs. Like most reports about reductions in Pentagon spending, however, there is less to it than meets the eye.

First, the overall size of the Pentagon budget would not come down very much. A large amount of the money that is supposedly being cut is in fact only being transferred from the Air Force and Navy budgets to the Army's, which is scheduled to increase by $5 billion a year. The overall military budget will continue to rise; from 2006 through 2011, the Pentagon will still spend more than $2.5 trillion, not counting the costs of the war in Iraq, which now exceed $200 billion.

Second, the proposed savings will take some time to translate into actual budget reductions. For example, in its 2006 budget, which will be sent to the Congress next month, the Pentagon plans to cut budget authority - which includes spending, borrowing and contractual obligations - by $5.9 billion. But because so much of that money was scheduled to be spent toward the end of the decade, the actual reduction in 2006 alone will be only about $1 billion. Most of the money that will be spent on new weapons next year has already been authorized by Congress.

Korb gives some specific examples of cuts that aren't really cuts and points out that it's hard to kill a weapons system because that will always result in a negative impact to at least one lawmakers district. So not only aren't most of th cuts real the ones that are real won't happen and everyone knows that.

We are facing a real budget crisis - one brought on by the unwise decision to cut taxes in the midst of a war. Unfortunately, the steps that the Pentagon now proposes will not do much to deal with that crisis, either in the short or the long term.

Some things never change.