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To the Editor:
Your Feb. 25 editorial "Defense and the Sequester" rightly likens the abrupt and indiscriminate budget cuts known as the sequester to a "political machete," but wrongly concludes that the Pentagon can easily absorb these cuts with "prudence and good management."
We at the Defense Department are ready to implement the sequester and will do everything possible under this deliberately restrictive law to mitigate its devastating effects on national security. We also recognize that the Defense Department should help put our nation's fiscal house in order; that is why we have begun to cut $487 billion in defense spending over 10 years.
We also know we deserve only the budget we need, not the budget we once had. That need should be constantly reassessed. As former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and his predecessor, Robert M. Gates, have repeatedly said, we need to get better value for every defense dollar we're given.
But good management is undermined by sequestration and by something that your editorial does not mention but that is as much of a problem — the fact that we have no new appropriations bill and are living under last year's law. These two factors together lead to dangerous absurdities like having to curtail soldiers' training, ships' sailing and airplanes' flying. Our military will therefore not be fully ready to meet contingencies other than Afghanistan.
A strategic approach to defense spending is being seriously compromised by gridlock in Washington. That is why we urgently need Congress to pass a balanced deficit reduction package that President Obama can sign, and appropriations bills for the Defense Department and all federal agencies.
Our nation's security depends on it.
ASHTON B. CARTER
Deputy Secretary of Defense
Washington, Feb. 27, 2013
To the Editor:
I was assistant secretary of defense for systems analysis from 1970 to 1973. My staff and I were responsible for the defense planning, programming and budgeting system.
I am convinced that, given that staff and responsibility today, we could design a defense program that would ensure our capability to provide the forces needed to meet the challenges and objectives in the next decade, while reducing the budget to the levels called for by the sequester.
The keys would be to think through anew and carefully what those objectives and challenges may be, and the capabilities required to meet them, and to determine the extent to which we can plan to share with our allies the responsibility for providing those capabilities. Then we would need to develop the American share and work with our allies to see the complementary joint shares developed.
GARDINER L. TUCKER
Shelton, Conn., Feb. 25, 2013
To the Editor:
I read with interest your reasonable analysis of how "with prudence and good management," the Defense Department could absorb the cuts in the sequester. But the next day, you seemed to say there was no way to avoid significant damage if domestic cuts took effect ("The States Get the Bad News," editorial, Feb. 26).
Isn't "prudence and good management" possible across the board?
JIM FAIX
Menlo Park, Calif., Feb. 26, 2013
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