The Intelligence world will have to settle for only $80 billion dollars this year. Congress has passed their latest spending bills which, while not actually cutting their budget, only keeps the spy world with the same budget as last year. While this may not sound like such a big deal, the intelligence services are not so happy about having to postpone new hires and new satellite systems they were hoping to put into play this year. Congress left in the budget money allocated for hiring new cybersecurity teams and money to track the finances of terrorists.
While in tough financial times most levels of government spending get cut, and most agencies fight over who will get hit the hardest. Even now, with Iran pushing forwards to get the Bomb and more conflicts arising throughout the world the Pentagon is seeing its budget cut. Usually though the Intelligence services are “recession Proof”. But not so this year.
Also this year, as part of a compromise between Democrats and Republicans to raise the nation’s sovereign debt limit congress prescribed a series of painful cuts to the defense budget if lawmakers could not find $1.5 Trillion dollars to trim from the deficit over the next ten years. Congress had until thanksgiving to reach a compromise and failed. These cuts take place in fiscal year 2013.
America currently is running a deficit of over $1.5 trillion dollars a year and has a national debt of over $15 trillion dollars. Lawmakers from both parties agree this level of debt in unsustainable. The real question is how much more can be cut from the budget before America becomes less safe?
