Posted on 02/23/2009 7:26:07 PM PST by Libloather
Cut the Military Budget--II
By Barney Frank
This article appeared in the March 2, 2009 edition of The Nation.
February 11, 2009
I am a great believer in freedom of expression and am proud of those times when I have been one of a few members of Congress to oppose censorship. I still hold close to an absolutist position, but I have been tempted recently to make an exception, not by banning speech but by requiring it. I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending.
Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good. Obviously people should be concerned about the $700 billion Congress voted for this past fall to deal with the credit crisis. But even if none of that money were to be paid back--and most of it will be--it would involve a smaller drain on taxpayer dollars than the Iraq War will have cost us by the time it is concluded, and it is roughly equivalent to the $651 billion we will spend on all defense in this fiscal year.
When I am challenged by people--not all of them conservative--who tell me that they agree, for example, that we should enact comprehensive universal healthcare but wonder how to pay for it, my answer is that I do not know immediately where to get the funding but I know whom I should ask. I was in Congress on September 10, 2001, and I know there was no money in the budget at that time for a war in Iraq. So my answer is that I will go to the people who found the money for that war and ask them if they could find some for healthcare.
It is particularly inexplicable that so many self-styled moderates ignore the extraordinary increase in military spending. After all, George W. Bush himself has acknowledged its importance. As the December 20 Wall Street Journal notes, "The president remains adamant his budget troubles were the result of a ramp-up in defense spending." Bush then ends this rare burst of intellectual honesty by blaming all this "ramp-up" on the need to fight the war in Iraq.
Current plans call for us not only to spend hundreds of billions more in Iraq but to continue to spend even more over the next few years producing new weapons that might have been useful against the Soviet Union. Many of these weapons are technological marvels, but they have a central flaw: no conceivable enemy. It ought to be a requirement in spending all this money for a weapon that there be some need for it. In some cases we are developing weapons--in part because of nothing more than momentum--that lack not only a current military need but even a plausible use in any foreseeable future.
It is possible to debate how strong America should be militarily in relation to the rest of the world. But that is not a debate that needs to be entered into to reduce the military budget by a large amount. If, beginning one year from now, we were to cut military spending by 25 percent from its projected levels, we would still be immeasurably stronger than any combination of nations with whom we might be engaged.
Implicitly, some advocates of continued largesse for the Pentagon concede that the case cannot be made fully in terms of our need to be safe from physical attack. Ironically--even hypocritically, since many of those who make the case are in other contexts anti-government spending conservatives--they argue for a kind of weaponized Keynesianism that says military spending is important because it provides jobs and boosts the economy. Spending on military hardware does produce some jobs, but it is one of the most inefficient ways to deploy public funds to stimulate the economy. When I asked him years ago what he thought about military spending as stimulus, Alan Greenspan, to his credit, noted that from an economic standpoint military spending was like insurance: if necessary to meet its primary need, it had to be done, but it was not good for the economy; and to the extent that it could be reduced, the economy would benefit.
The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy.
I am working with a variety of thoughtful analysts to show how we can make very substantial cuts in the military budget without in any way diminishing the security we need. I do not think it will be hard to make it clear to Americans that their well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face.
So those organizations, editorial boards and individuals who talk about the need for fiscal responsibility should be challenged to begin with the area where our spending has been the most irresponsible and has produced the least good for the dollars expended--our military budget. Both parties have for too long indulged the implicit notion that military spending is somehow irrelevant to reducing the deficit and have resisted applying to military spending the standards of efficiency that are applied to other programs. If we do not reduce the military budget, either we accustom ourselves to unending and increasing budget deficits, or we do severe harm to our ability to improve the quality of our lives through sensible public policy.
Bawney Fwank is such a wiener. . . .
defence spending needs to be cut imho. US Debt problem is way too big.
Let’s see ... America’s mortal enemies coordinate an attack on our homeland and Fwank doesn’t know why there was an extraordinary increase in military spending to undo the Clinton cuts? That “man” is as much danger to America as is Bin Laden.
Shame on the citizens of MA for foisting this ignorant pervert on our nation. They should be thrown out of the Union because they are unfit to elect decent men to the Senate.
Ignores Obama’s stated position that ANY spending is “stimulus” (inaddition to being bad for America.)
In the current situation, I hate to say it, but Frank may be correct. There may be no choice but to cut the defense budget by 25% or more.
However, this does not happen in isolation. In such a case, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would likely be stripped by 90%. The days of big spending government may be over.
On top of that, the US may have to default on its national debt, because the Treasury bill has collapsed. The dollar may perform astounding acrobatics. Likely our society and economy are going to be very different than they are today.
Bawney Fag only likes the violence of his boyfriend spanking him.
Cut the militawy and then...spend the money on all his fwiends?
No evidence military spending is a stimulus?
For years the libs claimed the only reason the economy improved under Reagan was all the defense spending.
So were they lying then or now?
Entitlements are the big driver of increases to the federal budget - and now the so called “stimulus.”
This is not about reducing the budget. This is about replacing military jobs with non-military government jobs.
Go for it, fayghela. President Affirmative Action is going to have the world’s shortest honeymoon.
“I am a great believer in freedom of expression “
Stopped reading Barney Fraggot (faggot + frank) right there.
Except for all RATS & LIBS, of course. The enemy within is by far the most dangerous.
maybe twinkletoes doesn’t like their don’t ask don’t tell policy....
It is obvious he has no interest in the security of the nation - probably thinks his name is sufficient.
Cut de fence?
Build de Fence! Keep Mexican Drugs on Mexican Soil.
Oh, you mean the other de fence . . . defense? We need de Fence built for our Country’s Defense.
Barney is clueless. His wife ran a prostitution ring from his own house and Barney never knew what was going on.
Yeah, I know, I forgot the quotation marks: “wife.”
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