Jim
references a fine
piece by Spectator alum Phil Klein, who notes that tax
hikes won’t balance the budget, but spending cuts will.
“From a purely technical standpoint,” writes Phil, “it’s
possible to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course without
raising taxes. But it isn’t possible to increase taxes high enough
to balance the long-term budget without cutting spending.”
Phil’s absolutely right. And the problem with raising taxes
isn’t only its ineffectiveness in terms of debt reduction; it is
that raising taxes, especially in our sluggish and weak economy,
hinders economic growth and job creation. Yet without far more
robust economic growth, our debt problem will become
unmanageable.
But there’s a corollary to Phil’s point about tax hikes, and it
is this: Just as you cannot raise taxes enough to balance the
budget; so, too, can you not cut the defense budget sufficiently to
defuse our rapidly ticking debt bomb. And that’s because defense
spending ain’t the problem; entitlements are.
Indeed, as the Heritage Foundation’s James J. Carafano
points out, you could eliminate the defense budget altogether
and still, entitlements would bankrupt us within 40 years. Given
all the propaganda and spin in the media that’s probably hard for
most people to believe, but the data are telling.
Since 1970,
reports House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI),
defense spending has shrunk as a share of the federal budget
from about 39 percent to just under 16 percent — even as we
conduct an ambitious global war on terrorism. The fact is, defense
consumes a smaller share of the national economy today than it did
throughout the Cold War.
Heritage, likewise,
notes that:
Spending on national defense, a core Constitutional function of
government, has declined significantly over time, despite wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Spending on the three major entitlements —
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — has more than
tripled.
In fact,
defense spending is near historic lows… Between 2010 and 2015,
total defense spending is set to fall from 4.9 percent to 3.6
percent of gross domestic product (GDP), even though the nation has
assigned more missions to the military over the past two
decades.
Thus what Phil says about raising taxes is equally true of
cutting defense:
When analysts say that [defense cuts] have to be part of the
solution, they’re making an argument about the feasibility of the
politics, not of the policy.
From a policy standpoint, unsustainable projected growth in
entitlement programs makes [reform of these programs] necessary no
matter what. [Defense cuts] aren’t required, but Republicans are
being told they must accept them because they’re the price of doing
business with Democrats.
But if there’s one thing the federal government absolutely must
do it is defend the United States of America. Nothing else is
mentioned in the Constitution, and everything else pales in
comparison.
Unfortunately, there’s been a lot of cheap and careless talk
about cutting “fat” in the defense budget. But Obama already has
cut an estimated $330 billion
from the defense budget. How much more can we cut before we start
sacrificing actual warfighting capabilities?
Please understand: the biggest cost drivers in the defense
budget are not weapon systems, but rather pay and benefits. Yet no
one in Congress is talking about cutting or reforming these parts
of the defense budget.
In truth, American cannot afford any more defense cuts, which
will do nothing in any case to address our fundamental problem with
out-of-control entitlement spending.
