The first indications of what the Democratic Party in Congress has in mind for the military are starting to become public.  Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) announced that he is calling for a 25% cut in the military budget.  He believes that can be accomplished by getting out of Iraq much earlier than anyone is presently talking about and by cutting various weapons programs.  To put this into scale, the Fiscal Year 2008 DOD budget, including supplemental spending bills for the "War on Terror" is $699 billion.  To reduce 25% of that figure means to find $175 billion.  Of course, just stopping the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ("Global War on Terror" extra funding) will reduce spending by some $218 billion, more than achieving the 25% goal desired by Franks.

This flies in the face of already announced plans by Obama to increase military action in Afghanistan, which would likely also mean increasing the personnel end-strength of the Army and Marine Corps.  As any business leader knows, personnel expenses are the single most expensive part of any budget and that certainly holds true with the Department of Defense. Making any real cuts in defense spending necessarily involves cutting personnel. 

However, in a bit of political sleight of hand, just stopping the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would arguably reduce defense spending by 35% thereby permitting the administration and Congress to declare success without reducing anything within the core defense budget.

President Clinton managed to reduce the national deficit by reducing defense spending during his administration.  Given that defense spending is over half the discretionary budget at the federal level, if any administration, whether Democrat or Republican, wants to reduce federal spending, the defense department is going to have to take a major share of that reduction.  Stand by.