Well, that didn’t take long. Back when Leon Panetta was President Clinton’s budget director, he demanded major changes in Pentagon expenditures, resulting in a 13 percent decline in military procurement spending. When President Obama named him defense secretary, his reputation as a deficit hawk was as much a qualification as his more recent experience as director of the CIA. But as the debt-ceiling bill was signed last week, Panetta - only a month into his job at the Pentagon - sounded resistant. He argued that if a special congressional committee couldn’t come up with a deficit plan, then the mandated $600 billion in defense cuts would be the “doomsday’’ scenario. Other adjectives included “debilitating,’’ “capricious,’’ and “devastating.’’
Budget cuts: Panetta goes Pentagon
EDITORIAL | Globe Editorial
It’s telling that Panetta made his remarks before conducting any independent assessment of the bloated Pentagon budget - an assessment that could highlight wasteful weapons systems and organizational structures built around Cold War needs. He acknowledged relying instead on discussions with the military service chiefs, a group not known for its fiscal restraint.
Maybe Panetta’s comments are part of an elaborate strategy by the Obama administration to force congressional Republicans to support new revenues, by highlighting the potential damage from deficit reduction through cuts alone. But he also risks entrenching a Pentagon culture that has resisted many reasonable cuts as debilitating, capricious, and devastating. Panetta needs to look for responsible ways to cut, rather than encourage the military’s worst tendencies.