Defense budget will continue to increase until 2015

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0106/Defense-budget-to-cut-100-billion-Army-and-Marines-will-shrink

Defense budget: to cut $100 billion, Army and Marines will shrink
The Defense budget signals the close of 'endless money' for post-9/11 spending, Secretary Robert Gates says. Some cuts will be reinvested in the military, others will go to deficit reduction.
By Anna Mulrine

The Pentagon budget, rolled out Thursday, is the realization of a warning Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued shortly after America’s economy took a turn for the worse – that the “culture of endless money” created in the booming post-9/11 defense budget would soon be coming to an end.

It is also the Pentagon’s bid to preempt even larger cuts from the White House or Congress, which were expected if the military did not curtail what Mr. Gates Thursday called the department’s often “wasteful, excessive, and unneeded spending.”

At $553 billion, the budget is some $13 billion less than the Pentagon expected for 2012, says Gates, but still represents 3 percent growth over fiscal year 2011, and the Pentagon remains the largest single spender of federal dollars.

Indeed it’s all relative. While the Pentagon has identified $178 billion in cuts for the five years from fiscal year 2012 to 2016, it plans to reinvest about $100 billion of that into its own services, leaving the remainder for deficit reduction. Overall, the defense budget – which does not including the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – will continue to increase until 2015, when it flattens....

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2011 meme: "Okay, the MIC has done their part for the deficit. Now, what about ENTITLEMENTS?"