US President Barack Obama’s choice of expert budget-cutter Leon Panetta to lead the Department of Defense is a clear signal the White House perceives the US deficit crisis, not its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as its toughest challenge.
After winning the presidency in November 2008, Obama asked Robert Gates to remain defense secretary as the administration struggled to bring clarity to the fog of two wars. In tapping Panetta to replace Gates, Obama is turning to a Washington insider and veteran of budget fights as the administration wrestles with reining in an estimated US$1.6 trillion deficit.
A military budget that has doubled since the Sept. 11 terror attacks faces certain cuts amid the clamor from fiscal-minded lawmakers, emboldened members of the ultraconservative Tea Party movement and an electorate insistent that Washington change its spending habits. The prospect of the US drawing down the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan pumps up the volume in the call for cuts.
Congress and the White House have moved to trim defense spending with the budget for the current fiscal year set at US$513 billion, US$18.1 billion less than the administration proposed. In outlining his deficit-reduction plan, Obama said he wanted to slash another US$400 billion from defense over the next 12 years. The president’s bipartisan fiscal commission recommended Pentagon cuts of US$1 trillion over a decade.
Enter Panetta, an eight-term congressman, former chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee, one-time head of the Office of Management and Budget, White House chief of staff for former US president Bill Clinton and current CIA director.
“People are looking at the military budget in much sterner terms,” said former representative Bill Frenzel, a Republican who worked closely with Democrat Panetta on the Budget Committee. “They’re digging deeper than the president to settle the fiscal crisis. Defense has to give more ... This will make Leon’s job extremely difficult and very sensitive.”
If confirmed by the Senate, the 72-year-old Panetta will face a chockablock agenda — Pentagon spending, two wars and the continuing US military operation in Libya, certification that the military is ready to deal with openly gay members in its ranks and the selection of a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Gates told senior staff that he had recommended Panetta to Obama six months ago. A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity in advance of the formal White House announcement, said Panetta was initially reluctant to leave the CIA for the Pentagon but eventually relented and decided he could not refuse the president.
Panetta is a Republican-turned-Democrat who once worked in former US president Richard Nixon’s administration, quitting amid dissent over the president’s civil rights policies.
Obama selected him for CIA director, an appointment that prompted some grumbling in Congress and national security circles that he lacked the background and experience. Panetta has received good marks, however, and his constant presence in National Security Council meetings should ease the transition for a defense secretary dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
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