Why not everything by 5%?

Of course - I know the answer. The defense budget is easy to get to and is just a happy bucket of money.

Have them pay more than they need for each unit of energy while we cut their budget (result is even less energy which means less deployments, training, etc ... use it as a slush fund while you ignore the whole problem hoping the crisis and hard choices will happen on someone else's watch down the road ....

From the State of the Union speech tonight;

And I’m proud to announce that the Department of Defense, the world’s largest consumer of energy, will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history – with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year.

...

Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.

... and now;

The U.S. defense budget to be proposed next month by President Barack Obama will cut military spending five percent to $525 million, Pentagon officials said Jan. 24.

The fiscal 2013 budget proposal will show the first decline since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in the base Pentagon budget, which excludes operations in conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Those “overseas contingency operations” amounted to $118 billion in the current fiscal year in addition to the main Pentagon operations.
...
The budget is set to be unveiled as President Barack Obama moves to create a leaner U.S. military focused on countering China’s rising power while signaling a shift away from large ground wars against insurgents.

The administration is preparing for $487 billion in defense cuts over the next 10 years. But the reduction could be as high as $600 billion if automatic cuts are imposed under a budget deal between the White House and Congress, which calls for certain measures to trim the deficit if no agreement is reached on other cuts.

I've seen this movie before. The budget cuts - real budget cuts, not baseline cuts - will come only from the military. They will claim cutting XXX,XXX government jobs - almost all will be DoD, and so on.

Sigh. Thing is, I am sure most military would be happy to take even more than a 5% cut to ensure our nation's financial security ... if everyone else does as well. It all needs to be cut - but I don't see any real seriousness.

Yep, seen this movie before. Click.