For years, liberals and libertarians alike have been calling for budget cuts from our bloated defense budget and for an end to our imperialist misadventures overseas. Defense commands a whopping majority of our discretionary spending each year and in 2013, it was $625 billion, or eighteen percent of the entire budget. The next two highest discretionary areas were Transportation (2.8%) and Education (2.6%).
But on Wednesday, the U.S Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work pleaded for congress to “stop the madness” of defense budgetary cuts, which will go into effect through automatic sequestration by 2016, unless a deal can be reached. Additionally, congress has not yet figured out the 2015 budget, which technically began on October 1. The government is currently being funded through a continuing resolution, passed in September and expiring on December 11th.
While the congress’ constant failure to push budget legislation through on time certainly deserves the term madness, pushing through defense cuts is the opposite, it is sanity. The world is a mess, and it always has been. But that does not mean that we have to continue spending nearly 40 percent of the entire worlds military expenditures.
Only since the military industrial complex became an appendage of our economy has it been necessary to spend outrageous amounts, like the $398.6 billion and growing to develop the F-35 aircraft. Think about where else that money could be spent.
The American Road & Transportation Builders Association reported that 63,000 bridges across America are structurally deficient and 8,000 of these are fracture critical, meaning if one vital piece fails there is a risk of collapse. Shouldn’t some of those billions be going towards our failing infrastructure? What about education, which makes up only 2.6% of the budget. Or maybe, just to please the deficit hawk libertarians, we could just cut some of those billions all together!
The United States 2013 military expenditure, while down from previous years, was nearly as much as the next nine countries combined, and more than three and a half times the spending of China, who is number two on the list. This kind of spending surely seems to be a sign of madness, and in a way it is. But behind all of the plain old fear that many on both the left and right spew, it is merely a business.
A business that funds the campaigns of congressmen like Howard “Buck” McKeon and Mac Thornberry, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the United States House Committee on Armed Services. The three most supportive industries for McKeon’s campaigns were miscellaneous defense, defense Aerospace, and defense electronics, according to OpenSecrets. Thornberry’s number one campaign contributor is from the defense aerospace industry, and three of his top five contributors are defense related.
So its not terribly surprising when these sort of individuals begin losing it and implying its “madness” when they hear of potential cuts from the defense budget. At the sequester level cuts, the projected defense budget would be $515 billion in todays dollars by 2019, which is still $50 billion higher than 2002 fiscal year budget.
Would this relatively small cut really threaten our security? Maybe it would make our government think twice before they start spending hundreds of billions of dollars on an aircraft. Unfortunately, these cuts will likely lead to layoffs within the government and defense industries. But should we really be spending tax dollars on building weapons of destruction and cancelled technologies?
As usual, the root of the problem seems to be in the structure of our political and economic system. The special interests will fight hard to keep our bloated defense budget well fed and politicians who need reelection funds will make promises. Fear will also keep defense spending a top priority, as it has before. But maybe, just maybe, we can decrease our spending to only three times the amount of China’s, and invest that money in our children's future for once.
References:
1)http://thinkprogress.org/...
2)http://www.dailykos.com/...
3)http://www.reuters.com/...
4)http://www.acq.osd.mil/...
5)http://www.usatoday.com/...