Approaches for Scaling Back the Defense Department's Budget Plans

In 2013, the Department of Defense (DoD) faces an 11 percent reduction (after adjusting for inflation) in its base budget from the amount it received in 2012. (The base budget funds the department s normal activities but excludes overseas military operations like those in Afghanistan.) Under current law, the department s budgets will increase by a cumulative total of 2 percent more than inflation between 2013 and 2021, still well below its funding in 2012 in real (inflation-adjusted) terms.1 Those limits are mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), which capped annual funding for defense and nondefense agencies during that period. The reduction in 2013, however, follows a period of generally increasing real resources for DoD; from 2001 to 2010, funding for the department s base budget rose by more than 40 percent, after adjusting for inflation. In real terms, after the reduction in 2013, DoD s base budget is about what it was in 2007 and is still 7 percent above the average funding since 1980.
Report to the Senate Committee on the Budget.