Administration Officials Firm on Defense Budgeting

Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady and other Bush Administration officials Sunday rebuffed suggestions from some aides that the Administration consider deeper reductions in the defense budget.

The Administration is under pressure from Democrats in Congress to slash defense spending to reduce the federal budget deficit, and some White House officials have floated the idea of an additional new cut of some $7 billion from the $303-billion defense budget Bush presented in January.

But Brady, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and other Administration officials said their budget request should remain unchanged, and Brady added on Sunday that no new reduction is under consideration.

“We got to where we are with the Soviet Union--the enormous changes that we’ve seen in the last several months--because we held hard on the budget and held hard on defense,” Brady said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “So (the present budget request) . . . is our position at this point in time.”

Bush’s $303-billion request for next year’s defense budget includes a $3-billion cut from the level military spending would have reached if it had been allowed to increase with the rate of inflation, sometimes called the “baseline” level.

According to several reports, some White House officials have suggested reducing the request a further $7 billion to roughly $296 billion, for a total drop from the baseline of $10 billion or more.

But Brady said that idea has received no serious consideration at the Cabinet level. “As far as I know, I’ve sat in all of these discussions and there has been no talk of a $10-billion cut,” he said.

Defense Secretary Cheney has vowed to fight any move to cut that much. “You can’t lop off $10 billion without cutting back on personnel or readiness,” he warned in remarks published in Sunday’s New York Times. “You’ll end up hollowing out the forces, making them undermanned, ineffective, which is what everybody says they want to avoid.”

Democrats in Congress have been loudly demanding greater cuts in the defense budget, arguing that the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Eastern Europe--and the Administration’s own acknowledgement that the military threat in Europe is waning--should produce a “peace dividend” to help reduce the deficit and finance domestic programs.

But the Democrats themselves have not agreed on what level of reduction they should seek. Last week, House Democratic leaders agreed on a relatively moderate plan that would cut between $4 billion and $9 billion from Bush’s $303-billion request.

On Sunday, however, Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said he is seeking a cut of $17 billion below the Bush request--or $20 billion below the 1991 baseline.

“I think what we ought to do is take the defense outlays for fiscal year 1990--that’s this year we’re in now--and cut those outlays by about 3%,” he said. “That would give you a $20-billion savings or cut in defense from 1991 levels. That would go a long way to meeting our deficit reduction targets.”