A failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to strike a $1.5 trillion budget cut deal, or a later decision by Congress to reject the plan, could lead to automatic and devastating consequences for the nation’s military and the defense industrial base, a Pentagon spokesman warned.
If either More…
The release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate has overshadowed another major story coming out of the administration today. Multiple sources within the Pentagon have told the AP and reporters from other publications that President Obama intends to nominate current CIA director Leon Panetta to fill the position More…
Just when you thought the conversation over government spending had moved firmly from the executive branch to the legislative, Christopher Hellman, a military spending analyst with progressive think tank the National Priorities Project, comes in with a fresh take on President Obama’s budget proposal.
The midterm hangover having finally worn off, the 111th Congress returns today to kick off the lame-duck session, its last hurrah before its successor takes over. And the 112th Congress will look radically different, with Republicans in control of the House and the Democratic majority in the Senate significantly reduced. More…
The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s powerful trade association, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filed a petition to intervene in a lawsuit that seeks to keep the Pentagon from using fuel from Canadian oil sands.
Despite the Gulf oil spill, a massive pipeline break in Michigan and broad concerns about global warming, ambitious climate-change and energy legislation is likely dead for the year. That poses a conundrum, going forward, for environmentalists: How to convince lawmakers of the need for legislation to sever the country’s More…
Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a series of Pentagon spending cuts, designed to trim the military’s budget by $100 billion over five years by slowing the rate of spending growth. Initial criticism, if any, came from deficit hawks who view the cuts as too small, and More…
Preempting Washington politicians looking for easy ways to close the deficit and reduce the debt, the Pentagon is trimming its own budget. Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced he will close a base, reduce the number of generals and take other measures to slim the military.
Just to be clear: Defense Secretary Robert Gates is not talking about leaving the Pentagon. But when he ultimately does depart, possibly as soon as next year, a leading candidate to succeed him is his undersecretary for policy, Michele Flournoy. And judging by her speech Thursday at the annual conference More…
As I wrote last month, the House’s version of the defense bill has a provision that could jeopardize a hard-won effort to repeal the military’s ban on open gay service: a second engine for the F-35 fighter jet. Obama has publicly threatened to veto the bill because of the More…
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