Are The Defense Cuts Illusionary?

Benjamin H. Friedman finds fewer cuts than meets the eye:

The White House claims that the security caps will generate $350 billion in savings from base (non-war) defense spending over ten years. That number, contained in a White House press release and repeated in countless media reports, is a PR invention.

It replaces the also phony $400 billion in defense cuts that the President recently proposed over twelve years. The administration produced the $350 billion figure, I’m told, by projecting security spending at the capped level across the decade, even after the caps expire, and counting as savings the difference between that spending trajectory and CBO projections, which assume growth above inflation. Then they assigned most of the savings to defense. The total is nonsense because the bill neither holds down security spending after two years nor offers any basis to assign the Pentagon a portion of those imaginary savings.