“Defense cut by 2/3: $475 billion”
Get serious.
I know, I was scratching my head over that too. ??
That's got to be a typo or goof. The referenced article talks about pg. 58 of a Federal Budget document. When I pull the document up it runs to all of 5 pages.
$475B in cuts presumably comes from eliminating all the Overseas Discretionary Operations (Iraq&Afghan) of $160B and reduces the $388B (Procurement of $112B, R&D of $76B, Operation and Maintenance of $200B) to only $73B.
The $250B remaining after cuts still pays for all Military Personnel $138B, plus the $73B above, plus another $40B miscellaneous. Probably that $138B on personnel would drop considerably without Iraq & Afghan. The FY2000 Defense budget was only $267B including all the foreign bases. Inflation to 2011 would make that $267B into $349B today, yet we are over double that.
So really, closing foreign bases and the concomitant personnel reduction only has to produce a $100B decrease compared to our inflation adjusted FY2000 $349B budget.
It doesn’t sound all that impossible if we assume closure of all foreign bases and an end to policing the world with ground forces.
2011 Defense Spending (in millions$)
Discretionary Base budget authority:
Military Personnel ..................................................................................... 138,541
Operation and Maintenance ...................................................................... 200,248
Procurement ............................................................................................. 112,873
Research, Development, Test and Evaluation .......................................... 76,131
Military Construction ................................................................................. 16,924
Family Housing ......................................................................................... 1,822
Revolving and Management Funds .......................................................... 2,380
Subtotal, Discretionary Base budget authority ................................................ 548,919
Discretionary Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget authority:
Requested (2011 includes $254 million in U.S. Coast Guard funding) ..... 159,336
Subtotal, Discretionary OCO budget authority ................................................ 159,336
Total, Discretionary budget authority (Base and OCO) ................................... 708,255
Total, Discretionary Outlays (Base and OCO) ................................................ 714,428
Memorandum: Outlays from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ...................... 2,491
Mandatory Outlays:
Existing law .................................................................................................. 3,959
Legislative proposal .....................................................................................408
Total, Mandatory outlays ................................................................................ 4,367
Total, Outlays ................................................................................................. 718,795