In an event today at the White House, President Barack Obama called for a crackdown on wasteful defense spending and said there must be more competition in the contracting process. Obama declared the “days of giving defense contractors a blank check are over.”

The statement came less than a week after the president’s budget, in which he requested over half a trillion dollars in regular funding for the Pentagon in addition to $130 billion in funding for the assorted wars currently being fought.

The Obama Administration is anticipating “big savings” in defense spending past fiscal 2010: primarily by budgeting less than half the normal amount for wars. The reality of the escalation in Afghanistan and the decision to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq fighting combat operations after the formal end of combat will likely make those budgets overly optimistic, however.

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