For the first time since 2001, there is real and building momentum to include caps or even reductions in defense spending as part of the bipartisan drive to address the United States’ runaway deficits.
Defense spending, which has more than doubled since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, has always been the third rail of congressional funding debates. After Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last year that "the spigot of defense funding opened by 9/11 is closing," there was widespread skepticism in Washington that either party would take up the cause.
Gates is directing all the military services to tighten their belts, and Pentagon sources say that every shop is looking for things it can do without. But as part of Gates’s plan to incentivize the military to get rid of waste, he’s instituted a policy that services can "keep what they catch," so that initiative won’t lower budgets all by itself.
But now, a growing chorus of congressional Democrats, along with a smattering of Republicans, is feeling more confident that 2011 could be the year when actual limits on defense funding, or even cuts to the defense budget, might be imposed.
