Republican presidential candidates debated defense budget cuts the night of Nov. 22, when former Texas Gov. Rick Perry went as far as to call for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to resign in protest of them.
Eight Republican contenders for their party’s nomination to battle President Barack Obama for the White House next year faced off at a nighttime debate in Washington. The event–hosted by The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and CNN–was intended to be focused on foreign policy and national security.
However, the topic of Pentagon budget cuts comprised only one question in the debate that waded into non-military areas including immigration policy.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)–who in recent polls of voters is either the frontrunner or tied for first place with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney–answered a question about whether he would be “willing to say that our national security is so paramount that cuts to the defense budget are unacceptable” with “No.”
“I helped form the Military Reform Caucus in 1981, at the beginning of the (former president Ronald) Reagan (military) buildup, because it’s clear that are some things you can do in defense that are less expensive,” Gingrich said. “It’s clear, if it takes 15 to 20 years to build a weapons system at a time when Apple changes technology every nine months, there’s something profoundly wrong with the system. So I’m not going to tell you automatically I’m going to say yes.”
The former House speaker called for using a Lean Six Sigma engineering model to save money at the Pentagon and throughout the government.
Gingrich’s comments clashed with Romney’s, with the former Massachusetts governor decrying the first round of defense cuts already called for by the Budget Control Act of 2011 as well as additional potential reductions.
The White House says the law cuts $350 billion in defense spending over 10 years, which the Pentagon says translates to a $450 billion reduction from its spending plans. The Pentagon is facing more cuts of up to $600 billion, because the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction said Nov. 21 it could not craft a plan to cut $1.2 trillion in government-wide spending; under the law if the committee fails a sequestration process is supposed to trigger $1.2 trillion in spending cuts starting in 2013, with half coming from the Pentagon.
Romney at the debate decried weapon-system cuts, which he said “cut into the capacity of American to defend itself.” He has called for halting defense cuts and setting the Pentagon budget at a floor of 4 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Perry, meanwhile, said he was not surprised the so-called “super committee” failed, saying: “We had a president of the United States who is not a leader. He pitched this over to them and said, here, y’all figure this out.”
Perry has spoken against defense cuts on the campaign trail. He expressed concern at the debate about Pentagon reductions spurred by the Budget Control Act, noting Panetta also is worried about them.
“If Leon Panetta is an honorable man, he should resign in protest,” Perry said.
Panetta has warned against the additional $500 billion to $600 billion in defense cuts that would come through the sequestration process. Still, he said on Nov. 21 he agreed with Obama’s statement at a press conference the same day that Congress should not try to change the law to rewrite the sequestration mandate for the defense cuts.
Perry said “it was reprehensible for me for this president to stand in front of Americans and to say that that half a trillion dollars…is not going to be on the table and we’re just going to have to work our way through it, putting young men and women’s life in jeopardy.”
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, when asked at the debate where he stands on defense cuts, called for facing “the deficit reality we have as a country,” which he dubbed “a national-security problem, because at some point, you just don’t grow any more when your debt becomes that” large.
“As it relates to defense spending, let’s be realistic about this,” he said. “We can’t have an intellectually honest conversation about where we go with debt and spending with sacred cows.”
Huntsman said “everything’s got to be on the table” during budget deliberations, including the Defense Department. He argued: “If we can’t find some savings in the $650 billion budget, we’re not looking closely enough.”
Huntsman reiterated his call for a new national-security and foreign-policy strategy, saying it must follow economic policy and address the “counterterror threat” in “every corner of the world.”
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) drew cheers from the crowd when he said “they’re not cutting anything out of anything” regarding the Pentagon budget, because all reductions are made to planned increases in defense spending.
“There’s nothing cut against the military, and the people on the Hill are nearly hysterical because…the budget isn’t going up as rapidly as they want it to,” he said. “It’s a road to disaster. We better wake up.”
The Iowa caucus, the first big electoral event in the process of nominating a GOP presidential candidate, will be Jan. 3, seven months before the Republican nominating convention.