Senior US Military Chief Warns Against Steep Cuts To Defense Spending
By KUNA
Senior U.S. military chief, General Martin Dempsey warned Tuesday that steep cuts in the country’s defense spending would pose a “very high risk”.
Dempsey, the White House nominee to be the next chief uniformed officer of the U.S. military, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that proposed USD 800 billion in defense spending cuts would be “extraordinarily difficult and very high risk.”
He pledged to “adapt the United States military to a new fiscal reality while ensuring, as my primary responsibility, that America remains immune from coercion.”
President Barack Obama has proposed USD 400 billion in defense spending cuts in the next 12 years.
Some lawmakers of Obama’s Democratic Party have proposed cuts twice as steep as the United States confronts a ballooning US debt.
The proposed defense budget for 2012 is about USD 671 billion, including USD 118 billion for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, by far the largest in the world.
The United States has already hit a debt ceiling of USD 14.3 trillion.
The country will default on August 2 unless Obama and Congress can reach a deal to raise the allowed debt level.
