Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has said he will trim the budget of his office and top military chiefs’ headquarters by 20 percent between 2015 and 2019, Reuters reported Tuesday.
David Alexander writes Hagel told civilian workers at Naval Air Station Jacksonville Tuesday that the cuts would also apply to combatant commands.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said the move is expected to generate $1.5 billion to $2 billion in annual savings.
“I won’t have any choice,” Hagel told the group, adding that “we took a $37 billion cut this year and you see the consequences of that.”
Hagel said an additional spending cut of $52 billion in fiscal 2014 would force the department to implement further layoffs.
He added that future cuts at the Pentagon could eventually affect compensation packages, which represent about half of the department’s budget.
The department is required to slash $487 billion over the next decade plus $500 billion in across-the-board cuts under sequestration, which aims to reduce U.S. budget deficit.
Hmmmm…. when Secretary Gates promised cuts to headquarters, they did not materialize; why should anyone believe these promises, especially when they extend so far into the future. And why wait two years to start? One on looks at the FY13 and FY14 sequester amounts, one sees a 20% cut to the defense budget in just two years. It is an even larger cut when one factors in the reductions that occurred in FY11 and FY12. So what this article is saying is the headquarters have priority in the budget allocation: they are being cut by less than the overall department and much, much slower. Hence, headquarters will take up an EVEN LARGER proportion of the overall military. The media should call him out for that. 20% in 6 years? Big deal. I’ll be impressed when the HQ cut is larger and sooner.