President Obama on Wednesday called on Congress to work with his administration to avoid up to $50 billion in annual cuts to defense spending required by a 2011 law designed to reduce the federal budget deficit.
“We have done some enormous work, and I want to thank everybody sitting around this table to continue to make our forces leaner, meaner, more effective, more tailored to the particular challenges that we’re going to face in the 21st century,” Obama said after meeting at the Pentagon with military leaders and members of the National Security Council.
“But we also have to make sure that Congress is working with us to avoid, for example, some of the draconian cuts that are called for in sequestration, and to make sure that if we’re asking this much of our armed forces, that they’ve got the equipment and the technology that’s necessary for them to be able to succeed at their mission and that we’re supporting their families at a time when, even after ending one war and winding down another, they continue to have enormous demands placed on them each and every day.”
The sequestration cuts are on top of caps on defense spending imposed by the Budget Control Act in 2011, and came as a result of the failure of the White House and lawmakers of both parties to agree on how to cut spending elsewhere.
Defense spending has been shrinking because of factors that have nothing to do with military strategy — even as the world is growing more dangerous — and that is creating a gap between the Pentagon’s funding and what it’s being asked to do, that is expected to stretch to $200 billion to $300 billion over the next five years.
Obama did not specify what Congress should do to remove the $50 billion in annual sequestration cuts that are set to run through 2023, but in the past he has insisted on making that part of a comprehensive budget deal — a move that has lacked sufficient political support in either party or in the administration.
