Nervous Pentagon wonders: Where do tea-party congressmen stand on military spending?

“I cannot say it strongly enough: I will not support any measures that stress our forces and jeopardize the lives of our men and women in uniform,” Mr. McKeon said in an opening statement that followed up on a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urging him not to stop work on the Marines’ $14.4. billion Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, a combined landing craft and tank for amphibious assaults that Mr. Gates canceled this month.

But Representative Chris Gibson, a Tea Party-endorsed freshman Republican and a retired Army colonel from New York’s Hudson River Valley, made it clear that no part of the Pentagon’s $550 billion budget — some $700 billion including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — was immune…

Most Tea Party candidates spoke little about national security and the military in fall political campaigns focused on cutting spending over all. “It’s a mystery to me,” General Chiarelli said of the newcomers’ intention on the defense budget, but he said he was eager to sit down at the Pentagon for talks with the newcomers…

But so far, few Tea Party-backed members on the House Armed Services Committee have said specifically where they would cut. In public remarks at the hearing on Wednesday, several spoke up in favor of favorite military programs or of protecting military installations at home, illustrating the difficulty of balancing their overarching philosophy and goals with the immediate concerns of their districts.