Military Spending
My column from today's Roll Call explains how and why Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was saying two things last week: that spending cuts at the Pentagon are coming and that spending cuts at the Pentagon will be limited.
Gates to Pentagon: Prepare for Budget Pain
May 11, 2010
Most of the attention last week may have been paid to the gyrations in the stock market, the debate on Wall Street reform in the Senate, the continuing efforts to clean up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the election in the U.K., and the continuing competition between “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” to be the most-watched program.
My Roll Call column this week explains why the refusal of even some of the members of Congress who call themselves deficit hawks might have been infuriating but wasn't at all suprising.
The Real Story About Pentagon Spending and the Federal Budget
Dec. 8, 2009
It didn’t get the name until two years later, but what we know today as the Defense Department was created in 1947. Although the Navy was part of the new department from the beginning, lifers and veterans of that branch have often told me that they almost never think of themselves as being or having been part of the DOD. This included my late father-in-law, who, when the talk turned to politics after Thanksgiving dinner, would routinely rail against the Pentagon and go to great lengths to explain why the Navy was, is and should be separate from the rest of the military.
Two articles on funding additional troops in Afghanistan, both of which were published yesterday, raise some of the most interesting and tricky federal budget-related issues of the year.
The first, from the Los Angeles Times, points out that the cost of sending additional troops to Afghanistan will be significant: somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million PER PERSON. In other words, the 40,000 additional troops being discussed would cost $40 billion a year.
The second, from one of the blogs at The Hill, explains how House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-WI) has let the White House know he's seriously thinking about proposing a tax equal to the additional cost of whatever the president ultimately decides to do.
The Senate yesterday followed its vote to stop funding for additional F-22s with a vote to stop funding for an alternate engine for the F-35. This was yet another administration proposal put forth by the White House and Defense Secretary Gates and another budget-related win for the administration.
Why was it a win?
1. Like the F-22, it was an earmark that the White House proposed to eliminate.
2. This is something the Bush administration repeatedly proposed but could never get done even when both houses of Congress were controlled by the GOP.
3. It saves money.
As with the F-22, there's a long way to go before anyone can be sure that the alternate engine for the F-35 isn't funded. But this first not-so-small step is something that should definitely be noted for the record.
Yesterday's announcement by House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jack Murtha (D-PA) that, in light of the Senate's vote against it, he was not going to include funds for the F-22 in the fiscal 2010 DOD appropriation, may have been the final blow for the plane and a huge budget-related win for the White House.
We'll see. Murtha is obviously extremely important, but there are still a number of ways that funds for additional buys for the fighter could be added at other points in the process. Note that Murtha didn't say he now opposes the F-22, only that he wouldn't add funds to buy any more in his bill. But if someone offered an amendment on the House floor to restore funding, or the Senate approprations committee included funds it its version of the 2010 DOD appropriation, or if the funds magically appeared at the last minute in the conference report on the spending bill...
Yesterday's 58-40 vote in the Senate to cut funds for the F-22 is a big deal.
But this was a vote on an authorization bill and the funds can still be provided in the DOD appropriation that will be considered later in the year.
An appropriation enacted after an authorization is the most recent indication of congressional intent and, therefore, legally may provide funds for programs that have not been authorized. That makes this vote important (especially because it shows what the White House can do on Capital Hill), but not the end of the story
It is not inconceivable that someone who voted against F-22 in the authorization eventually will vote for it in the appropriation.
So those who think it's time to celebrate should hold the champagne.
I know I'm coming a little late to this party, but the topic deserves some additional discussion.
John Stewart was right last week when he asked "On what planet is a 4.1 percent increase a cut?" If you haven't see the clip elsewhere, see below.
I took a great deal of heat late last December in response to something I said in a post about Martin Feldstein's assertion that, even though it might not be an efficient way to to do it , increased military spending should be part of an economic stimulus package. Most of the heat was directed at my assertion that Feldstein was wrong when he said the Pentagon budget would decrease from 2009 to 2010.
I held my fire back then because the only thing that would actually settle the issue was the Obama budget, which we now have. The increase (yes, I said the increase requested for DOD is 4 percent. As I said back in December, that absolutely is less than the 13+% increase the Pentagon had been hoping for, but it is an increase nonetheless.
Update: Here's more from the Henry L. Stimson Center
A year ago I was assuming that the military budget would be increasing faster than what was commonly assumed because the Pentagon would have to pay more to recruit and maintain the number of people in uniform. With personnel being a hefty chunk of what the Pentagon spends every year, and given the problems it was having a year ago getting people to enlist in the midst of an increasingly unpopular war, bonuses and other incentives seemed like a sure thing and more resources were going to have to be devoted to recruiting.
This article from last Monday's New York Times shows that the Pentagon had been assuming pretty much the same thing. In addition to adding more recruiters, it was planning to use a change in the GI Bill that significantly expands post-military service education benefits (and costs) and was going to rely increasingly on signing bonuses for new recruits.
Following up on a tip by the indispensable Minnesota Mom, the next book on my reading list is The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War
Today, I still situate myself culturally on the right. And I continue to view the remedies proffered by mainstream liberalism with skepticism. But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute. Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering foreign policy, a disregard for the Constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound moral controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values.
