Military Services Told They Must Trim $2.2 Billion From Budget

Pentagon Comptroller Sean O’Keefe told the military services Wednesday that they must trim $2.2 billion from this fiscal year’s military budget of $285.7 billion, a senior defense official said.

Included in the order is a $1-billion cut in the military’s personnel budget. However, in his memo to the services Wednesday, O’Keefe said that the Pentagon had the option of avoiding troop cuts by reducing other accounts, such as equipment procurement and research and development.

The notification of cuts this year came as the military’s top brass and civilian secretaries of the military services met for the second day to discuss how the department could cut $180 billion from its 1992-1994 budget blueprint. Relaxed tensions in Eastern Europe and the ballooning U.S. budget deficit have combined to create strong pressure for such reductions.

The cuts called for Wednesday are the result of a budget compromise between Congress and the White House for fiscal year 1990, which began Oct. 1. The compromise, hammered out over the last few months, calls for a $4.7-billion reduction in this fiscal year’s federal budget. The military has been asked to shoulder $2.2 billion of the total.

However, senior Pentagon officials said that the $2.2 billion is less dramatic than had been feared. If the full force of the Gramm-Rudman budget deficit reduction law had come down on the Pentagon, the services would have had to cut $3.4 billion from its manpower budget this year.

Pentagon officials had said that cuts of that magnitude would have forced the armed services to reduce their active-duty troop levels by 170,000 to 230,000 men and women--as much as 10% of U.S. fighting forces.

A senior defense official said that the services are expected to ask Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to exercise his option to redistribute the current budget cuts so that they do not force personnel cuts. Cheney, with an eye on events in Eastern Europe, is likely to agree that troop levels should be maintained at least for next year.

In a sweeping overhaul of defense budgets from 1991 to 1994, however, Cheney and other Pentagon officials have said that the services will be forced to make deep cuts in manpower. Cheney has said that he would prefer to reduce the overall size of U.S. forces to ensure that those that remain are well trained and are fully equipped with the smaller budgets.

An official said that the meetings about major budget cuts for 1992 to 1994 have been solemn, as service officials offered to scale back and terminate some of their most cherished programs.

“It’s not been done with a lot of hand-waving and hysterics,” said a senior defense official.