The answer to no - this is not a "baseline budget" scare tactic.
This chart lays out just part of the problem. Where you see the $407 Billion in cut, those were started 2 years ago, and it is even worse (the total cut has been increased to $487 Billion, in part to "pay" for the Sandy pork bill.
This was a HUGE cut to the Pentagon under Obama I. Thousands of DoD jobs were lost, and modernization programs cancelled or scaled down.
THEN came the Continuing Resolution, which froze the DoD budget to last year's levels. There is no "increase" in spending. It gets worse. When things like fuel prices increase (and they have), the DoD has to pay those costs. The cost of almost everything is up from last year, from fuel to healthcare. The Pentagon is paying for all of that with less money.
On top of all this come the gift of Sequestration, which is the final knife to the Dept of Defense. It demands over $600 Billion in cuts over ten years, and we are already halfway through the fiscal year. So all of the first year's cuts have to come between March and September.
Then it gets worse.....again.
Obama is demanding huge cuts in active duty troos as part of his 2011 massive cut to the Pentagon, but to deflect blame for the Sequestration cuts and to avoid political fall out during the fall campaign, he said the Pentagon cannot touch military pay. So all the cut have to come from Operations and Maintenance, the life blood of the military. The O&M cuts will be 25% or greater.
That is why the Joint Chiefs are not joking this time. This is a disaster for the US and our military.
