Posted on 01/07/2004 7:21:47 AM PST by TastyManatees
Has the President Gone on a "Spending Spree"?
Only if you think that withdrawing from the war and surrendering the world to Osama bin Laden is a viable option.
A lot of conservatives have been on a tear lately (myself included). Every time you turn around, someone is screaming about government spending and the there are those who are more than happy to exploit the confusion surrounding spending issues to erode support for the President. The San Francisco Chronicle recently put out a hit piece attempting to spin the spending numbers in a way that makes the President seem like he's been making irresponsible requests for spending as compared to the previous Administration. There's just one problem, the Federal government has not been going on a bender, but fighting a war and refitting a military that was allowed to waste away for too long.
That's right, Federal defense spending has been increasing...now that we are at war. To get an accurate picture of the spending picture, you have to talk about discretionary spending over the past ten years or so and honestly analyze discretionary defense spending versus other types of spending.
The San Francisco Chronicle's latest backdoor attack on the Administration includes a handy-dandy breakdown of discretionary Federal spending Congress has approved in the past three years. A few facts are readily apparent from the info the Chronicle provides:
1. Overall discretionary spending from the last budget year of the previous Administration, has increased from around $664 billion in 2001 to $873 in 2004. That is an increase of approximately $209 billion in overall discretionary spending. The Chronicle tells us that the previous Administration's budgets increased by "only" $141 billion from 1994-2001.2. The Bush Administration's discretionary defense spending increased from 2001's budget of $313 billion (minus $20 billion in money appropriated immediately after 9/11/01) to $492 billion budgeted for 2004. The difference amounts to approximately $199 billion dollars ($179 billion plus the $20 billion subtracted from 2001), or about 63%. In three years.
3. All other discretionary spending increased from the previous Administration's final 2001 budget of $331 billion to a whopping $381 billion budgeted for 2004. This difference amounts to approximately $50 billion, or 15%. Over three years.
4. The Chronicle has neglected to provide for comparison any defense spending numbers under the previous Administration. This immediately raised a red flag with me, because the Chronicle's implication is that the previous Administration somehow did a better job at keeping Federal spending in check.
Once one does a little background checking with the Congressional Budget Office, it becomes readily apparent how the previous Administration was able to keep spending increases down. No wonder the Chronicle was loathe to share discretionary defense spending figures for the eight years preceding 2001.
According to the CBO, from 1993 through 2001, discretionary defense spending increased from $292 billion in 1993 to $306 billion in 2001. That's about $14 billion dollars, or an astounding 5%! Over eight years. And numerous military engagements abroad. And repeated attacks by the same Al Qaeda that eventually attacked us on September 11.
In fact, if you look at the figures, discretionary defense spending was actually CUT REPEATEDLY by the previous administration from 1993-1999. Here is the breakdown as reported by the CBO:
1992 302.6
1993 $292.4 (last budget year of the first Bush Administration)
1994 $282.3
1995 $273.6
1996 $266.0
1997 $271.7
1998 $270.2
1999 $275.5
2000 $295.0
2001 $306.1
No wonder the Chronicle came up with low discretionary spending growth numbers for the previous administration. No wonder they were able to make the misleading implication that President Bush's budgets for the past two years have outstripped the previous Administration's spending. No wonder I don't trust these ideologues.
For eight years, the previous Administration used discretionary defense spending as a piggy bank to fund other discretionary spending. Major shortcomings began to become evident, but the threadbare military was allowed to continue in the same shape because there was no pressing national crisis or public outcry for men under arms.
That all changed when Islamic terrorists supported by enemy nations murdered thousands of Americans in a horrific surprise attack on a defenseless nation.
Go find David Brooks's very recent NYT column (title something like "GOP Can Be Party of Reform and Hope"), which ran in the Houston Chronicle on 1/5, in which he explains that Dubya and Karl Rove are walking the GOP away from conservatism, because Bush "understands" that it can't be the party of Barry Goldwater any more.......(hell, Bush never "not understood" that, because he's never been a Goldwaterite).
But don't go by my characterization of the article. Read it for yourself.
And oh, by the way -- told ya, everybody. Told ya he wasn't a conservative -- "compassionate" or otherwise!
Brooks, besides scribbling for "all the news that fits", is also a senior editor for the Weekly Standard, a citadel of urban neoconservatism (which label is itself a misnomer, because a neocon is a New Dealer with a defense policy).
Bush 41 started the process during his administration; many of the units he sent to the Persian Gulf for Desert Shield had been scheduled for demobbing and were instead extended for the Gulf War.
After the war, the RIF's and ship decomissionings continued, including the one that put Timothy McVeigh, who wanted only to stay in and go to jump school, on the street. (And we all know how well that personnel decision turned out!)
Everyone likes money. Political walking-around money. Vig money. Republicans like to use it for tax cuts; the GOP-led Congress and Administration repeatedly cut the Army Department's budget in the 1920's, until soldiers were training with wooden rifles, and the Army Air Corps was practicing bombing with flour sacks.
There were other rounds of cuts in the 1950's, when the Air Force budget was the only one expanding -- the Navy shrank, and the Army was cut back. That was during the Eisenhower Administration.
I disagree with what Slick did with DoD's budget during the 90's, particularly since he upped its tempo of operations for Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti, but stuck it with a peacetime no-worries budget. I particularly dislike his idea of jacking up reserves and National Guard callups to meet his operational needs in the Balkans (a practice Bush 43 has continued perforce in the face of much greater need), because he was actually imposing a sort of "tax" in the form of a labor levy on the public, rather than paying for standing forces necessary to do the same job.
In short, while I'm thankful you posted the budget numbers, I think they're insufficiently revealing of the actual burden on the economy of Clinton's defense activities, but are instead a sort of put-up job of their own by a clever, snaky budgeteer.
I noticed, sport. On 9/12/01, I went in on my day off and pulled my retirement papers off my CO's desk. And I realize that knowledge of the Constitution is a bit lax there in Washington, but foreign nationals may commit acts of war but it is the solemn duty of one branch of the national government to request, and another to Declare it.
[As to how I would have handled discretionary defense spending, I would have started by boosting Army manpower by about two corps, going through munition stocks like there was no tomorrow, and made getting pee stains out of linen the second biggest problem from Tripoli to the Philippines. Oh, and the Guard and Reserve biggest current problem would now be shortage of politely worked preprinted rejection letters. Thanks for asking.]
If you had bothered to read the piece (I am serious), you would have noted that it did discuss non-defense discretionary spending. My guess, though, is that you are more concerned with non-defense, non-discretionary spending. "Entitlements" such as Social Security and Medicare fall under this category. See my above post for a quick discussion of that.
And if you hadn't been preoccupied with masking what some have quoted as more like double your figures for discretionary non-defence spending by waving a rather threadbare set of Colors at us, you wouldn't have had the point go over your head that I was giving the embarrassingly anemic defense discretionary spending figures a pass. It is discretionary non-DoD spending that has gone up like it was managed by a drunken sailor under Bush. THAT is the point.
Not true of the defense budget. After the inauguration, Bush 43 rebuffed Don Rumsfeld's laundry-list of DoD budget needs (to repair the damage done by Slick) and told him to stand fast -- and then told him to do a $60 billion carve-out for SDI.
That was all pre-9/11.
My guess is that Bush 43 was playing tax-cut politics, and refusing to allow the liberals to use defense requests as a peg on which to hang an attack on reductions in marginal tax rates.
Now that he's got the tax bill, defense requests can rise.
One thing that stuck me as odd, though was the 15% figure. Two days ago I saw that figure given as 31%, and I seem to remember it coming from a rather conservative source.
Rest assured however, I'll not ever be caught proposing a liberal position on defense.
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