Austerity seems to be the defining word of the Great Recession. Consumers are starting to spend and go into debt less and save more, state governments have slashed budgets in light of falling tax revenues, and businesses are cutting costs with Trump-like efficiency. The exception to the rule seems to be the federal government, between their stimulus bill, health care reform bill, and TARP.

The GOP, being the “small government” party, naturally made reducing government spending a large focus of their midterm elections selling points. However, there is one sacred cow that they will never, ever dare to touch: military spending.

Their plan for national security seems to be to throw as many dollars at the Pentagon as possible. When that strategy is done for the military, it’s called “keeping our country safe” and “supporting our troops.” When Democrats attempt to try the same money-pouring strategy for education and health care, it’s called a “government takeover.” The problem with government throwing money at a problem- in any case- is that, as Margaret Thatcher said, “you eventually run out of someone else’s money.” Therefore, if the GOP’s solution to this problem is to cut government spending, it needs to do so more or less uniformly, not exempt the third biggest item on the budget from any cuts. To delude themselves otherwise would be a blatant attempt at attracting the neoconservative-military vote.

In a WSJ op-ed, prominent conservatives disagree with that notion. They say that “it is neither the true source of our fiscal woes, nor an appropriate target for indiscriminate budget-slashing in a still-dangerous world.” They’re wrong.

They cite the fact that military spending as a portion of GDP and as a portion of the federal budget are both stable and well below the federal budget. However, that doesn’t change the fact that nominal defense spending has nearly doubled since 9/11, going from $305 billion in 2001 to $533 billion in 2010. The lack of a relative increase is a reflection of runaway spending throughout government departments and heavy tax cuts that characterized the Bush years- from $5.8 trillion to $13.4 trillion through the same period. Even if the military is not the sole cause of our deficit, it is clearly a key contributor.

Now for their characterization of all military budget cuts as “indiscriminate budget-slashing”: it’s pretty funny how they claim that government programs are full of waste and inefficient bureaucracy, but can do no wrong when it comes to the military. But just like any other military program, military spending is rife with wasteful and unnecessary spending. A McKinsey study named the U.S. as the most wasteful of 33 industrialized countries in terms of weapons funding. A congressional report last year cited 96 weapons systems as costing $300 billion over estimates and averaging 22 months behind schedule. That’s almost half the total budget for Medicare and Medicaid, two government-run health programs that, according to Republican logic, must be behemoths of wasteful spending.

But it’s how Republicans justify this outsized military budget that really gets to me. In Congressional testimony time and again, GOP congressmen (and their Democrat counterparts), especially in states where defense manufacturing is located, cited the need to protect jobs as a rationale to keep growing the military budget. Apparently the government can only create jobs when it’s the Pentagon doing the hiring. Government-funded solar panel factories are a waste of taxpayer money, but government-funded warplane factories are vital job creators? Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.

I believe the GOP has the potential to offer sensible solutions to reducing the deficit, and that their philosophy is more suited to tackling the task. However, military spending is just one area in which their deeds don’t match their words on the campaign trail. Yes, we face a dangerous world full of causes unfriendly to us, but that doesn’t mean we give our military carte blanche and a blank check to do whatever they want and bomb whatever country they want. Such an attitude got us into Iraq. As such, military spending, just like federal spending, needs to be more selective and less free-flowing. The GOP apparently hasn’t gotten that memo yet.

And one last thing: having a larger military budget than almost the rest of the industrial world (as shown in the graphic above) should be enough resources to keep the country safe. It’s pretty pathetic if it can’t.


(Photo: polylemonade)