Military funding at risk in tough times

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The Pentagon got nearly everything it asked for during a decade of two wars shadowed by the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the rise of al-Qaida. No more.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen acknowledged that reality Thursday, saying the military is resigned to budget cuts of around $350 billion over a decade to meet the public clamor for reducing the nation’s debt. But they quickly warned that more than doubling those cuts along the lines of the “doomsday mechanism” spelled out in the new debt-limit law would undermine the military.

“If it happened — and, God willing, that would not be the case — but if it did happen, it would result in a further round of very dangerous cuts across the board, defense cuts that I believe would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our military’s ability to protect the nation,” Panetta told reporters at his first Pentagon news conference.