House Call

The House Appropriations Committee plans to slash the Pentagon's fiscal year 2011 budget request by $13.2 billion, according to a chart on spending limits and cuts issued today by the committee. This is a 2 percent cut relative to the Defense Department's FY-11 request, but a 2 percent increase to what was enacted in FY-10, a committee spokeswoman confirmed.

In a related statement, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), the panel's chairman said he is instructing each of the 12 appropriations subcommittees to produce specific, substantive and comprehensive spending cuts.

"We are going go line by line to weed out and eliminate unnecessary, wasteful, or excess spending -- and produce legislation that will represent the largest series of spending reductions in the history of Congress," he said. "These cuts will not be easy, they will be broad and deep, they will affect every Congressional district, but they are necessary and long overdue."

Asked whether House appropriators have decided which specific programs they want to cut, committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing said "The legislation is being crafted; no final decisions have been made."

Under the current time line for floor consideration, details on House appropriators' proposed cuts to specific defense programs should be made  public sometime late next week, Hing said.

Rogers issued the statement after the House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced plans to cut $74 billion compared to the president’s FY-11 request.