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In a featured article for National Review’s Defense Week, former Sen. Jim Talent (MO) makes the case for why the sequester should be repealed and why “the defense budget is not the problem,” when it comes to excessive spending in the federal budget. “The driver of the budget crisis is the structural gap between the cost of entitlement programs and the revenue collected to fund them,” Talent says.
“Moreover, to the extent that a decline in American power leads to global instability and conflict, it will reduce economic growth and, therefore, the revenues that are available to balance the budget,” Talent says. Read below for key excerpts:
Necessary Spending (full article)
Congress should repeal the sequester cuts to defense. The Pentagon should reduce waste in its budget.
By Jim Talent
This year’s defense budget is coming into focus, and the picture isn’t pretty. Congress and the president will probably agree to increase defense spending by a small amount, but they will probably also take money away from future defense budgets. This will allow them to say that they have increased defense spending while in reality the wholesale unraveling of American power will continue.
Here is a timetable of defense-budget decisions over the past four years:
- 2009: After Barack Obama takes office, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates cuts $400 billion from defense spending, ending most major Pentagon modernization programs, including the F-22, the C-17, the DDG-1000 Destroyer, and the Army’s Future Combat Systems program. …
- Spring 2011: Secretary of Defense Bob Gates submits a budget plan that provides for modest increases in defense spending over the following ten years. But soon after, the president asks for $400 billion in defense cuts, ignoring both the Perry-Hadley report and his own secretary of defense, and without offering any strategic analysis whatsoever of the impact of the reductions.
- Summer 2011: Congress agrees to cut $500 billion from then-current budget projections, again with no analysis of the impact.
- Fall 2011: Congress and the president come to an agreement: Unless there is a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction agreement by the end of 2012, sequestration will take effect, including an additional $500 billion reduction in defense spending over the next ten years.
- March 2013: After a 60-day postponement, the sequester goes into effect, reducing defense spending by an additional $50 billion for the current fiscal year and lowering the defense-budget baseline by similar amounts in succeeding years.
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As I posted recently, every category of primary risk to the United States is growing. The Chinese are building up their power without masking their intent: They want to be able to deny the United States access to the East and South China Seas so they can pursue their national ambitions in those waters. Al-Qaeda is active again in Iraq and has created planning bases in the Arabian peninsula and Northern Africa. Iran is approaching nuclear capability, which it will use in support of its conventional aggression, much as North Korea is doing now. Syria is descending into chaos; the conflict there, and forces unleashed by the Arab Spring, are threatening to destabilize other parts of the Middle East.
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What should be done? First, the most recent and dangerous round of budget cuts, those that resulted from the sequester, should be repealed. No one in Washington defends them, and it is impossible to claim that they are necessary to balance the budget. The Ryan budget eliminates the defense sequester, though beginning only in 2014, while replacing it with other reductions and balancing the budget in ten years. The Republican Study Committee has produced a budget that repeals the sequester, again only after this year, while achieving a balanced budget in five years. Even the president’s budget reverses the sequester, though it reinstates some of the sequester cuts after he leaves office in 2017. (That is a common budgetary trick, allowing presidents to count savings against their ten-year budget targets while handing the consequences to their successor.) To the extent possible, the House should hold the line on its budget, which exempts the Department of Defense from the full effect of sequestration.
More broadly, those in Washington who really want to address the budget crisis should understand clearly that the defense budget is not the problem. The driver of the budget crisis is the structural gap between the cost of entitlement programs and the revenue collected to fund them. That gap is growing. As it does, it crowds out everything in the discretionary budget, including defense funding. Shrinkage of the defense budget is therefore less a solution to the crisis than one of its negative consequences. Moreover, to the extent that a decline in American power leads to global instability and conflict, it will reduce economic growth and, therefore, the revenues that are available to balance the budget.
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Second, there are crucial defense programs that can and must be funded even in the current environment. Chief among these is missile defense. Ballistic-missile defense is an entirely defensive, non-nuclear system that will — if it is fully deployed — give the United States the ability to shoot down missiles, which are most likely to be launched by rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran.
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Finally, it is essential that the Pentagon take credible steps to reduce the waste in its budgets. Efforts should focus on reforming the acquisition system, reducing the number of civilian employees, and rebalancing the compensation system in a way that reduces the out-year costs of retirement pensions and health care. The Perry-Hadley panel addressed these issues three years ago and recommended commonsense solutions that Congress ignored at the time but should make a priority now.
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Ever since the introduction of weapons of mass destruction on the world scene, the highest strategic purpose of the American military has not been to win wars but to mitigate risk; America maintains a robust set of capabilities so that presidents can protect the vital national interests of the United States while deterring or at least containing conflict within acceptable limits. Perhaps that approach should be changed, and perhaps changing it will make it possible to save money in the defense budget. But what must surely be wrong is to divorce defense policy, including spending decisions, from strategy that is, to make budgetary decisions that sacrifice important capabilities wholly without regard for strategic considerations. That is what Washington has been doing for the past four years.
Jim Talent is a former member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and is currently a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
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