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The Spectacle Blog
Phil notes the growing divide between fiscal conservatives and national security conservatives over whether the defense budget should be included when looking at possible spending cuts. Here’s an interview with freshman Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who is as national security-minded as anyone elected in November.
West argues that you “have to” be open to defense cuts, but that the cuts should be made by people with an understanding of national defense. That may well be a way forward for divided conservatives on this topic, if national security conservatives are willing to pick up the scalpel.
View all comments (11) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/11/30/possible-way-forward-on-defens
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Derek Leaberry| 11.30.10 @ 11:53AM
As this site demonstrates, the conflict between military conservatives and fiscal conservatives is too vast to bridge. Military conservatives do not accept that $ 1.3 trillion deficits require radical spending cuts, including military cuts, if the country is to head off a future budgetary implosion. It would appear that there will only be small budget cuts anywhere in the federal budget over the next two years,. Very few, if any, will be military cuts. The Congressional Republicans will be proved inadequate to the task of the budget cutting that they were elected to do in November 2010. Obama will be re-elected and the problem of massive deficits will be kicked down the road once again. Rome 476 can be seen at the end of the dark tunnel.
Warrior | 11.30.10 @ 1:39PM
It doesn't matter if it's entitlements, agencies or defense, no one wants their part of the cash flow cut, slowed or even reviewed. Everything in the budget is important to someone. Everyone understands trillion dollar deficits are unsustainable, but like the happy but obese restaurant patron, a salad bar will not suffice a couple of times a week, I need all seven courses and little extra pie at the end never hurts even though he needs to renew his prescriptions for diabetes, high blood pressure and anxiety. Of course all of this is consumed with a diet Coke and words about how things will need to change before it kills me.
Zbigniew Mazurak| 11.30.10 @ 3:35PM
There is a guide that indicates which categories of federal spending should be reduced (or abolished), and which ones should be not. It's called the US Constitution.
The Constitution clearly says that defense is a duty of the Federal Government (vide Article IV), as well as one of the reasons why the FG was established in the first place.
However, the Constitution doesn't authorize federal education programs, subsidy programs, welfare spending, environmental programs, transportation programs (except post roads), nor housing programs.
Yet, so-called fiscal conservatives have so far singled only ONE category of federal spending for reductions: defense spending. They have not proposed ANY significant reductions of America's bloated domestic spending, whether it's the entitlements, the 2,001 subsidy programs, the Edu Department, the DOA, the USPS, the DOT, the DHUD, the Department of Naked Body Scanners, the DOS, the DHHS, or welfare spending.
All of these domestic spending categories have lobbies that defend them - the farm lobby, the AARP, states, unions, transportation lobbies, pork lobbies, etc. Defense spending, by contrast, has no friend, and the lobbyists employed by defense contractors are utterly ineffective, as shown by the nonstop defense cuts of the last 20 years.
Defense spending constitutes a small part of the federal budget (14.87%), but, as I see, the ideological opponents of a strong defense continue to reiterate their lies because, oh my goodness, paying just 15 cents out of every tax dollar you pay to the DOD is obscene, but spending 3 trillion dollars on bloated domestic programs is perfectly fine, right?
William R| 11.30.10 @ 7:03PM
The problem is the Israeli Firsters. American Spectator columnist Ben Stein was on Larry King a couple weeks ago saying not one nickel should be cut from the defense budget. This isn't about the United States national security rest assured. But people like Stein see any cuts in defense as a threat to Israel. They need to move to Israel. Get out of the USA.
Zbigniew Mazurak| 11.30.10 @ 3:20PM
What utter gibberish. The truth is that defense spending cuts are NEITHER necessary to balance the budget NOR acceptable under the present military circumstances (i.e. the multiple serious military threats America is facing).
Defense spending (not including spending on Iraq and Afghanistan) accounts for a paltry 14.87% of the total federal budget and only 3.65% of GDP. Those are miniscule numbers. The DOD is clearly not to blame for America's fiscal woes. Moreover, 3.65% of GDP is such a paltry amount that it's evident to anyone who isn't blind that the DOD can't do with less.
Cutting defense spending (rather than GWOT spending) when it is already so small would severely weaken the US military, and is therefore an utterly unacceptable option. The DOD's share of GDP has been permanently under 4% since FY1996, and the current defense budget is the SMALLEST (as a percentage of GDP) since FY1948, together with its Clinton-era and Bush-era counterparts.
The game would've been different if defense spending constituted 5%, 6%, 10% or 20% of GDP. Then, one could've credibly claim that the US military can cope with less money than that. However, the defense budget is already too small - it constitutes a microscopic 3.65% of GDP!
Also, Antle, West and the journalist who interviewed West all failed to mention an inconvenient truth: the fact that defense is a constitutional DUTY of the federal government, rather than an option that the federal government might or might not undertake. It is not for the FG to dither whether or not to provide for the common defense - it is its duty to do so.
Withdrawing American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan is perfectly OK, and even desirable fiscally and militarily (the US military should not be deployed in those countries - continuing the Afghan war of nation-building is pointless and since the Iraqi war has ended, American troops no longer need to remain in Iraq). Cutting defense spending is an unacceptable option.
Derek Leaberry| 12.1.10 @ 10:13AM
There aren't the votes now or in the future to cut the overall American budget without cutting defense. Even in your wildest pipedream, say, a Republican president with a Republican Congress with the votes to massively cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other parts of the budget, the Republican Party would lose 150 seats in the House and 10 Senate seats the next election.
Practical politics must be the politics of what is possible. Returning to 1801 or 1845 or 1904 or 1927 or 1953 just because you prefer the government spending ratios of those dates can not happen in the real world.
What must be done to stretch American defenses in a time of severe austerity is a pullback from overseas commitments. Nothing else will work in the real world.
Zbigniew Mazurak | 12.1.10 @ 2:34PM
But the federal budget should be balanced in a way that doesn't weaken America's defense. And defense cuts WOULD weaken the US military, whose core defense budget constitutes merely 3.65% of GDP.
I do agree with you, however, that all of America's foreign military commitments must be reconsidered and some must be ended. That is why I have proposed a withdrawal of American troops from Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Iraq and the Arab Peninsula long ago (vide my Defense Reform Proposals Package). I also advocate a drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan, and I believe that the Afghan war should be ended as soon as possible. But I believe that the core defense budget (the 3.65% of GDP sum) should not be reduced at all.
William R| 11.30.10 @ 9:58PM
Zbigniew Mazurak, you're the biggest blowhard fraud up here. We could cut 200 billion a year out of the defense budget and not miss a beat. Close down bases in Europe and Asia, declare victory in Iraq and Afghanistan and come home. Time to defend our borders instead of the rest of the worlds. We spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense and we are broke. It is time to tell the Israeli firsters to drop dead.
Zbigniew Mazurak| 12.1.10 @ 8:25AM
"Zbigniew Mazurak, you're the biggest blowhard fraud up here. We could cut 200 billion a year out of the defense budget and not miss a beat. "
Totally false. A $200 bn a year reduction of defense spending would be utterly disastrous. It would practically mean a deep reduction of the number of troopers and personnel, a cancellation of all current weapon programs, and dramatically reduced pay for all military personnel. A $200 bn per year reduction of defense spending would mean a dramatically weakened US military, one that would be impotent and weaker than even the Irish military, let alone the militaries of the biggest European countries.
"Close down bases in Europe and Asia, declare victory in Iraq and Afghanistan and come home."
That still won't give you $200 bn per year in savings, although it would give you a part of that
"Time to defend our borders instead of the rest of the worlds."
The US military is already defending America's borders, and has been doing so ever since it was established. It's not my fault that Obama has failed to send troops already available in the CONUS to the Southern border. There are plenty of available reserves, plus the troops stationed in Europe and Asia.
"We spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense"
False. The US doesn't even spend more on its military than the next 12 countries combined (even if you count TOTAL military spending, rather than just "core defense spending"), according to the SIPRI. The US accounts for merely 43% of global military spending - and that is EVEN if you don't account for PPP differences that conceal the real value of the military budgets of developing countries.
"and we are broke."
But it's not the DOD's fault.
"It is time to tell the Israeli firsters to drop dead."
I don't want the US to defend Israel. I believe Israel should defend itself and that the US should not back either side of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
William R| 12.1.10 @ 10:16AM
Military expenditures world wide.
http://www.globalissues.org/ar.....y-spending
200 billion easy. Tell the NeoCons to drop dead.
Zbigniew Mazurak | 12.1.10 @ 11:48AM
Real military expenditures worldwide (according to the Stockholm Intl Peace Research Institute, AKA SIPRI - hardly a neocon organization):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....penditures
Same issue, again based on SIPRI figures, posted on T&P:
http://truthandpolitics.com/military-US-world.php
The US accounts for only 43% of global military spending, and that is even if annual GWOT expenditures (which have nothing to do with America's defense, i.e. the task of building and maintaining a strong military) are counted.
No, it's not $200 bn easy. That would ruin the US military completely. Reducing the annual defense budget by even $50 bn would be a disaster - at least if the current Secretary of Defense (who is hardly a neocon, but rather a 30-year veteran of nat-sec affairs who has served 7 presidents of both parties) is to be believed.
Your claims are blatant lies, William.