By JOE NEWMAN
If you want some perspective on how serious Congress is about trimming some of the fat from the bloated Department of Defense budget, the first thing you should do is read between the lines of the recently passed debt reduction legislation.
The Project On Government Oversight's Ben Freeman and Angela Canterbury did just that and found that there's nothing in the law that requires the new Joint Select Committee on Debt Reduction to actually reduce DoD spending, despite the misconception the committee must find half of its $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction from the national security budget.
Freeman, POGO's national security fellow, and Canterbury, our director of public policy, muse on The Hill's Congress Blog that there is a mechanism in the law that requires across-the-board national security cuts, but it only kicks in if the so-called Super Congress can't reach an agreement by its November deadline.
If the Super Committee is split along partisan lines and can’t reach a deal the DoD will have to cut spending -- resulting in a rare moment when Congressional gridlock actually benefits taxpayers. But, if this Committee wants any credit for making real improvements over the status quo, they will take a serious look at profligate DoD spending and start trimming.
Joe Newman is POGO's Director of Communications.
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