Is It Okay to Cut Military Spending?

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has proposed a military budget for next year which is one percent lower than that for 2012. 

Included in the cuts are manpower strength, airplanes and ships.  Spending for drones and submarines, however, will increase.

On its face, such modest changes are not a cause for concern, much less alarm. After all, a stand-down in personnel would seem appropriate considering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Yet there is cause for worry in what these reductions may portend.

According to Administration projections, defense spending over the next ten years will decline to 2.7% of gross domestic product (a level last reached on the eve of World War II when the military was plainly not ready for what was to come).

In principle, there is certainly nothing wrong with a leaner, more efficient fighting force. That prospect is a strong selling point for the proposed budget. Of course, there is bloated, wasteful spending by the Pentagon. That is true in every governmental entity where the money being spent belongs to the taxpayers, not those spending it. If the money is not yours, there is little incentive to be economical in its expenditure.

Are non-defense agency budgets and so-called entitlement spending programs going to experience this same scrutiny? When one considers the constituencies of President Obama and the Democratic Party, not likely. And therein lies the danger for the future.

The role of the Federal government as set for in the preamble to the U.S. constitution is to

“Establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity”.

In one sense, defense is only one of five objectives. But isn’t it really “first among equals”?

If adequate provisions are not made for our defense -- and we are successfully attacked and conquered as a result -- the other achievements will disappear.

There is another aspect to the military budget which is essentially unique.  There needs to be some excess capacity built-in so that we can respond quickly to national security threats.  Think of 9/11.  “Lean” does not necessarily equate with “mean”.

The idea, however, that defense needs should be the federal government’s top priority is a concept which is either uncomprehended or denied by the Administration and liberals in Congress.

Do you remember that Democrats in Washington last fall insisted that there be mandated cuts of $6 billion in military spending if the budget deal failed?  Their “concession” was that such cuts would be matched by $6 billion worth of reductions of all other programs combined.    

Is spending by the Department of Transportation, for instance, really as important as Pentagon outlays?

Welcome to Alice’s Wonderland… would that this account were only a fairy tale.