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Analysts have mixed expectations of Panetta

A panel of defense experts who support big cuts in the Pentagon budget had mixed expectations Tuesday for how CIA Director Leon Panetta will perform as defense secretary.

Panetta, who appears Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee for a confirmation hearing, is expected to succeed Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who will retire at the end of the month.

One challenge Panetta will face is pressure to cut defense spending, particularly how to achieve the $400 billion in savings over the next decade that President Obama set as a goal earlier this year.

At a Capitol Hill meeting to discuss options for cutting defense spending, sponsored by Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Project on Defense Alternatives, defense experts said Panetta certainly is no stranger to the budget process. But it is not clear. they said, whether he can reshape military spending.

Panetta was chairman of the House Budget Committee and also headed the White House’s Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration.

Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate Budget Committee defense analyst who is now director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, said he is not convinced Panetta “will bring much change” to the defense budget.

In fact, Wheeler said he expects Panetta will be tested early in his tenure by service officials who try to get congressional support for threatened projects by going directly to Congress. This was a common practice for many years as a way to get lawmakers to back programs that might be killed or reduced during budget tradeoffs within the Pentagon.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gates both managed to get the services to stop trying such end-arounds on the Pentagon leadership, he said.

But Matthew Leatherman, a foreign affairs and defense budget analyst at the Stimson Center, said he is “cautiously optimistic” that Panetta “will be a large player” in reducing defense spending.

“I do expect a little bit of progress,” Leatherman said.