“If we don’t take defense spending seriously, it undermines our credibility on other spending issues”
This new generation of conservatives in Congress, freed from the ideologies of the Cold War and Reagan-era defense buildups, is pushing Republicans to buck their tradition and put defense on the chopping block in pursuit of a truly smaller federal government.
The group includes GOP rookies like Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan, Paul Gosar of Arizona and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas who simply aren’t concerned by the blunt slash to defense spending as long as it accomplishes the goal of deficit reduction. Others, like Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, aren’t particularly thrilled with the way the sequester cuts are made or the way the debt deal was done to begin with, but they’re ready to talk seriously about how to make cuts to mandatory military spending. And South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney, one of the most conservative members of the House, led a group of Republicans and liberal Democrats that sent a letter to the White House and congressional leaders calling on them to include serious defense cuts in a fiscal cliff deal.
Mulvaney, who teamed up with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) earlier this year to pass an amendment that froze defense spending, said the sequester is the wrong way to cut the Pentagon’s budget and believes there are alternative ways to come up with the cuts. But, he said, “the only thing worse [than the sequester] would be to not cut spending at all.” Mulvaney has been outspoken about the need to find savings in the defense budget…
“We either have a spending problem or we don’t,” Gosar said in an interview. “Going back to the military budget of 2009 — we’re still going to have the biggest military in the world. If we can’t go over this bump, we’ll never be able to get anything big done.”
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Why? Spending on the military is an EXPLICIT function of the government. As long as it is under 5% of GDP, it is well under historic levels.
astonerii on December 12, 2012 at 9:22 PM
If we’re going to start slashing the budgets of Constitutionally mandated government functions, let’s cut the post office first.
Left Coast Right Mind on December 12, 2012 at 9:26 PM
Message to GOP, stop being stooges for Politico hit pieces!!
They have their narrative already written, all you do is fill in the quotes they need.
commodore on December 12, 2012 at 9:28 PM
I’m sorry, but I’m done playing world police man considering we’re not playing police man on our own border.
I honestly think our presence in Europe is harmful. I gives Euros a ridiculously free pass on things and it’s harmful to both our cultures.
ninjapirate on December 12, 2012 at 9:30 PM
First off, spending on the military isn’t an explicit function of the government. The constitution says Congress shall raise a navy, but only may raise an army, meaning the founders never intended for the federal government to have a constant standing army, only a regular navy so as to protect trade.
And keep in mind, for them, the enemy was still literally on the continent, so please no arguments about how much more dangerous it is in the world today.
Secondly, we spend more than 5% of GDP on the military and that spend is more than the rest of the world combined. A little excessive I would say.
We have to face up to the facts on entitlements that we have promised people their benefits, explicitly. Constitutional or not, and in my opinion a definitive not, people have been promised money that they technically paid into these programs. Who do we owe more to, the American citizens or the citizens of Japan, South Korea, Israel, Germany, etc?
We could cut 100% of discretionary spending and we would still need to borrow money to pay the interest on our current debt. The military must be cut along with entitlements, and those cuts must be significant.
ReformedDeceptiCon on December 12, 2012 at 9:31 PM
Yep, on the backs of Defense.
If you are going to make a attempt to talk about slashing government spending without cutting anything else…WTF IS THE POINT!
As with taxes, cut dense completely, confiscate all the wealth of the rich…and it still isn’t enough, it doesn’t matter.
This is all talk to keep from actually doing something about welfare and the social hammock of entitlements.
catmman on December 12, 2012 at 9:31 PM
Alright then, bring back an ROE that advocates carpet bombing and Alpha Strikes to erase enemy positions regardless of collateral damage.
We spend a lot of money on precision weapons meant to blast a bunker but allow nearby civilians to escape with little more than a bit of dust on their clothing.
Bishop on December 12, 2012 at 9:31 PM
Another problem I have is that the American military isn’t used to protect Americans anymore, it’s fighting to promote an American world order as defined by American elites.
ninjapirate on December 12, 2012 at 9:32 PM
Get bent, idiots. If you don’t understand the purpose and actual responsibilities of the federal government then you have no business being there. Or, just call yourselves “democrats”, which allows you to know nothing about government.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on December 12, 2012 at 9:39 PM
This would all be well and good if, like tax hikes, the prospect of military cuts was not a cave-now-and-we-promise-that- someone-will-reciprocate-later- probably-maybe-in-the-next-Congress.
HitNRun on December 12, 2012 at 9:40 PM
That was ridiculously stupid.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on December 12, 2012 at 9:41 PM
Our government is off the rails and is never coming back. Why fight for that? Why would you want to spend money to defend it. Why would you want to promote that into other countries?
America is the new Trotskyite state.
ninjapirate on December 12, 2012 at 9:47 PM
All your complaints about the use of the military does not address the facts that I stated. As long as it is below 5% of GDP is below historical spending. It is an EXPLICIT duty of the government in the Constitution.
So, on topic what does this mean? Military has already been getting cut, and is even below historical norms WHILE we are in two hot wars. It is not driving the deficit, and thus, NO WE DO NOT HAVE TO ADDRESS it to be serious about spending.
astonerii on December 12, 2012 at 9:47 PM
Our government is not worth defending.
ninjapirate on December 12, 2012 at 9:51 PM
Nice counter argument. You have an impressive command of history and politics.
ReformedDeceptiCon on December 12, 2012 at 9:53 PM
Here’s my problem… the US military is pretty much a mercenary army to promote an economic and value system of American elites. It does not serve the average American.
ninjapirate on December 12, 2012 at 9:54 PM
Even after accounting for the wars, the military budget is 4.7% of GDP. Less than 5%. Excluding the wars, it is less than 4% of GDP. So, you must be quite ignorant of our budget.
Entitlements are not guaranteed, they have been judged as terminable by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is not about paying Japan or paying the most selfish worthless lot of Americans to ever exist. It is about whether we have have a save environment in order to prosper.
People like you are like children. You start off on some activity never thinking about the consequences of said actions. Imagine a world where we chose to simply attack Japan and ignore Germany. Or we allowed the soviets to take over the rest of the world while we skimped on military for a few tiny bits of GDP savings. Imagine a world where once they had Canada and Mexico under their thumb they ordered us to give up Alaska…
I am sure you do not see the consequences I argued above.
astonerii on December 12, 2012 at 10:02 PM
If you really want to cut spending, everything should be on the table, including defense. You can’t hold on to your sacred cow while you insist that the other side sacrifices theirs. Ain’t gonna happen.
tommy71 on December 12, 2012 at 10:08 PM
Cut all spending, including defense and the military.
I could care less if defense spending is less than 5% of GDP, cut it more. All federal spending combined should be less than 5% of GDP.
No need to protect Germany. No need to protect Japan. No need to meddle in the Middle East. I agree with Bishop, if we must pick a fight with someone, let the bombs fly. But enough with the nation building.
The military-industrial complex is no better than the entitlement state; just look at the commencement speech of one of our greatest military leaders ever, Eisenhower. There is a lot of waste that can be cut in the Defense Department. The welfare/warfare state needs to go.
letoile du nord on December 12, 2012 at 10:12 PM
The only problem is – no one is seriously talking about cutting the welfare state, just defense.
catmman on December 12, 2012 at 10:16 PM
Maybe Hollywood is on to something. Keep cutting the military, and soon North Korea will be able to successfully invade the U.S.
RoadRunner on December 12, 2012 at 10:21 PM
I am a staunch Constitutional conservative. I understand the purpose and actual responsibilities of the federal government quite well, thank you. And a good percentage of what our military is doing around the world is in no way related to the actual responsibilities of the federal government.
Just because the military is a legitimate function of the government does not mean that everything we ask the military to do makes sense or that every military expenditure is justified.
Shump on December 12, 2012 at 11:12 PM
Leaving the cost of the wars out, the defense department budget is around $700 billion. You then factor in those portions of the department of energy and the department of state that exist only to support the military, and then add in homeland security and VA healthcare costs, and the true military budget is over $1 trillion.
That is at least 6% of GDP and it is over 40% of what the federal government collects in taxes.
Put that in comparison with our total spending for WWII, which was $288 billion. 5 years for $288 BB or $57 BB per year. In today’s terms that would be $185 BB per year. So we spend more than 5x on our military today than we did when we were fighting a world war on land see and air in 3 continents, and we started that war with a very small fighting force.
So given the degree to which our military spending is out of whack with where it has been historically, I think it is not only “not childish”, it is prudent to admit our military spending must be cut, and if you do so, you have to moral high ground from which to argue for the entitlement cuts.
ReformedDeceptiCon on December 12, 2012 at 11:28 PM
The problem isn’t that we spend too much on the proper functions of government, like national defense. The problem is that we spend money on things that should never have been part of government spending.
Cut funding for EPA, Education, Interior, Planned Parenthood, Obamaphones, giveaways, and presidential vacations. Those are good targets.
Some people really need to wake up and realize that the world is still a dangerous place. Spend too little on Defense now, and we’ll be forced to spend desperately when things start turning nasty.
No, there is no Cold War. But there is still a hostile and crazy North Korea, an ambitious and growing China, a Russia wanting to regain past glories, and lots of Muslim countries hoping to set up a caliphate. Any one of these would love to get a chance to shove a rod in our spokes.
There Goes The Neighborhood on December 13, 2012 at 2:05 AM