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McKeon takes anti-DOD cuts message national
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon took his drive to avoid deep Pentagon budget reduction to the nation Tuesday, telling CNN that $600 billion in additional cuts would be “very, very serious.”
The California Republican appeared on the cable network's "Situation Room" program one day after announcing he is readying legislation that would turn back $600 billion in cuts to planned military spending over a decade scheduled to be enacted in 2013.
And notably, during the appearance, McKeon indicated a previous round of Defense cuts might reach deeper into military coffers than initially disclosed.
President Obama, a few hours later on Monday, answered McKeon’s pledge with a stern vow to veto any legislation that would void those automatic Defense cuts and an equal amount of domestic cuts.
The HASC chairman called the now-shuttered supercommittee’s inability to strike a deal “a failure.”
The $600 billion would be lopped on top of a $350 billion mandated by the August debt deal. The Pentagon says that first round of reductions would translate into a real-world reduction from spending over 10 years of $465 billion.
“I’m told it’s now $489 billion,” the chairman said.
A U.S. official confirmed the $489 billion figure in an email to The Hill.
McKeon used some recent developments to back up his contention that the nation cannot afford deeper Pentagon cuts, saying few would have on this past Jan. 1 predicted the uprisings in Egypt or Libya, or that North Korea would have sunk a South Korean ship.
The latter, he noted, brought a South Korean vow to respond with force if it happens again — something that could require sending American forces to help the South.
— Updated at 6:24 p.m.
