WASHINGTON–Once again, the country is in the lurch, hurtling at breakneck speed toward a cliff of a debt default disaster.
As the deadline to raise the debt ceiling grows closer, President Barack Obama and top congressional Republicans are doing a daily dance of tense private negations and terse press conferences, tossing around blame for a failure to come to a compromise.
But if anything is an indicator of how seriously politicians are taking the looming debt crisis, it’s that both Democratic and Republican lawmakers are considering cuts to defense spending.
As the defense budget has grown, Wheeler says, the military has suffered because it spends so much of its money on expensive, new equipment rather than on upgrading old equipment and training its troops.
“Historically, it’s been extremely hard to cut defense spending because hawks want to defend every dime and expand spending,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of the nonpartisan nonprofit watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. “But that’s running up against the narrative that we’re $14.3 trillion in debt.”
In his news conference Friday, Obama emphasized his intention to see cuts to defense spending as part of a larger package of fiscal reforms. The president referenced the December 2010 recommendations of a task force led by former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wy., and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, suggesting that he would look for cuts to defense spending beyond the cuts he said were already identified.
“In addition to the $400 billion that we’ve already cut from defense spending, we’re willing to look for hundreds of billions more,” Obama said.
Obama’s policy continues on the heels of statements by his then-Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, who spoke about reducing some of the bulk of defense, particularly in weaponry and equipment.
“Should we really be up in arms over a temporary projected shortfall of about 100 Navy and Marine strike fighters relative to the number of carrier wings, when America’s military possesses more than 3,200 tactical aircraft of all kinds?” Gates asserted in a speech in May 2010.
“Does the number of warships we have and are building really put America at risk when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies and partners?’’ Gates said at the time. “Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?”
Gates’ comments get to the root of the United States’ habit of massive military spending–the annual defense budget is more than $700 billion, added to estimated $3.7 trillion combined cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Overall, the White House budget for 2011 lists security spending at nearly 24 percent of spending for the year.
So what has changed, that cuts to defense spending are not only permissible now but highlighted?
The climate “hasn’t gotten where it’s going yet, but it’s evolving,” said Winslow Wheeler, the director of the Center for Defense Information, who has worked on national security issues for more than three decades for the Senate and the Government Accountability Office.
“Neither Democrats or Republicans want to be called anti-defense,” said Wheeler, who was recently on the Sustainable Defense Task Force formed by Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas.
“There’s so much low-hanging fruit that it’s not a difficult exercise” to cut spending in defense, he said.
Additionally, the presence of greater numbers of fiscal conservatives in Congress, particularly among the freshmen Tea Party Republicans, means more of a push for shrinking government. In its coverage of the debt ceiling debate, the Washington Post has this account of Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger:
“Rep. Adam Kinzinger could serve as a poster boy for the new breed of conservatives who are eager to wipe out government waste and inefficiency, no matter where they find it. Kinzinger, an active-duty Air National Guardsman who flew missions in Iraq, fought successfully last month to cut a request for $100 million to buy new flight suits for Air Force Pilots. The old ones, he argued, are good enough.”
Still, many congressional hawks are literally sticking to their guns. Prominent Tea Partier Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., put forth a spending bill earlier this year that would cut defense by almost $50 billion—and only managed to get seven Republicans to vote with him.
At the time, Pennsylvania Republican Linsdsey Graham said he wouldn’t support “any budget that reduces defense spending by over 40 percent.”
“I’m not going to vote for any budget that reduces our defense capabilities at a time we’re under threat,” Graham said.
But perhaps it’s Rep. Frank who put it best, finding common ground to avoid taxation, pleasing conservatives, and simultaneously protect some social welfare programs favored by liberals.
“Defense spending is damaging spending,” Frank said. “If we can get $100 billion from reducing unneeded military spending, that’s better than $100 billion of taxation.”
