Defense Secretary Robert Gates is going to reveal the proposed Pentagon budget for 2010 on Monday.  Here's what today's Washington Post had to say about what Gates may do.

On the one hand, this makes no sense.

The Obama administration let it be known last week that its detailed budget proposal won't be released until May, at least several weeks later than had been expected.  Revealing the details of the military budget a month or more before the rest of the budget invites it to be taken out of context and, with no other agency or department budgets to look at, for the media to obsess about it.

Continuing the series, we are, using the subtitle of Andrew Bacevich's book, "seduced by war."  It seems like an obvious proposition that we could reduce our military spending without compromising our national defense.  Plenty of that spending goes to expand our empire, not to protect our citizens.  For the right words, I'll turn to page 215 of the book:

A better approach [than pegging military spending as a percentage of GDP], one more likely to limit adventurism abroad while still meeting essential U.S. security requirements, would be to peg U.S. expenditures in relation to what others are spending.  To stipulate, for example, that the United States should match the next ten most lavishly spending powers combined would assure U.S. military capabilities not only far in excess of any potential adversary but also in excess of any remotely plausible combination of adversaries.  The budgetary impact of such a stipulation--one that if made by another country Americans would view as evidence of rampant megalomania--would be to reap substantial savings.  Indeed, at present the United States could earmark for defense as much as the next ten largest military powers combined and still reduce Pentagon outlays by tens of billions of dollars per year.

As I said about a month ago, its not always smart to disagree publicly with an economic icon, especially when he's Martin Feldstein.  Nevertheless, a Feldstein article published on Christmas Eve in the Wall Street Journal is so wrong that it and he deserve to be called out.

The title of the article -- "Defense Spending Would Be A Great Stimulus" -- says it all.  It's Feldstein's contention that additional military spending should be part of whatever economic stimulus package Congress and the Obama administration adopt in a few weeks.

Here are my objections almost paragraph by paragraph.

At some point in the past month or so, John McCain and Barak Obama or their advisors have both said that they will pay for some or all of what they're proposing with reduced military spending. 

The problem is that, even if all US troops are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not at all clear that the Pentagon budget will fall much or even at all.

Consider the following:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates yesterday became the latest member of the Bush cabinet to say something that can easily be proven wrong to support the White House.

As reported in the Washington Post, Gates said that a delay in getting the funds requested by the president for Iraq and Afghanistan would soon force him to start laying off employees and ceasing operations at bases.

Gates should know better, and should know that someone would quickly call him out on this.

Wonder no more: the defense budget will be increasing in the years ahead.

The Washington Post has published two articles in the past two days that point the way. On Thursday, Ann Scott Tyson reported that the military was having to pay bonuses to keep mid-level officers. The amount -- $25,000 to $35,000 -- wasn't much by Wall Street standards. But it is one of the best indications yet that personnel costs for the Pentagon will be increasing justso the Pentagon can keep the force it already has.