No, the Pentagon Is NOT Cutting Army Budget to 1930s Levels: Media's Latest Big Lie Debunked

By Steven Rosenfeld

February 27, 2014  |  On Monday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel unveiled his 2015 Pentagon budget in a detailed speech [3] where he proposed spending $496 billion—about $45 billion less than the White House, retiring a tank-shooting aircraft and spy plane, cutting the army’s size from 520,000 to 450,000 troops, and trimming subsidies for military housing and health care.

 

The rationale was that after America’s longest overseas war, 11 years in Afghanistan and Iraq, the military had to balance downsizing and modernizing. The coverage that ensued was anything but rational. “Pentagon set to Slash Military to Pre-World War II Levels,” blared NBCNews.com. The New York Times [4], Reuters [5], NewsMax.com [6], FoxNews [7], Time [8], CNN [9] all had headlines that the Army reduction was to “pre-World War II levels.”