Let's get Serious about Cutting Spending (Defense Spending)

A few weeks ago, Congressmen Paul Ryan released his vision for the future in the form of a budget that cuts $4-6 trillion and pays off the national debt by 2050.  While I commend Congressmen Ryan for his vision, more needs to be done.  In the budget, their was no mention of Social Security reform or Defense cuts.  To be fair, Ryan has a proposal for Social Security reform that would turn the system over to a privatized personal account based system but this reform didn’t make the budget because of the reality that Republicans only control one house of Congress.  This proposal is a great step forward and will be pursued, I would assume, after the 2012 election cycle.  What should be pursued now is defense spending cuts, which outside of the entitlement programs (all together) is the biggest expenditure in the budget.  

Currently, the U.S. spends over $700 billion in defense per year and operates over 700 bases in more than 135 countries around the world.  If you calculate all defense spending around the world and compare that number to the United States’ number, the U.S. spends 42.8 percent of all world spending of defense.  The next highest percentage is China at 7 percent.  This number is a very conservative number because the number does not include the majority of the Department of Homeland Security, and any interest on the debt that is defense related.  Clearly, this is an area of spending that needs to be addressed.

Before I get into specifics of what should be cut and how to cut.  First we need to realize that MAJOR reforms should come first.  By this I mean withdrawing troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan and ending this ridiculous “military action” (pronounced undeclared war) against Libya.  Also, the Department of Homeland Security needs to be eliminated and the agencies within in either cut completely or merged with other agencies that have similar objectives.  Also, the intelligence community is in desperate need of major reforms.  Currently their are 16 (that I could find, probably more) intelligence agencies.  Let’s start out be whittling that number down to five- the CIA, FBI, DEA (technically an considered intelligence agency), and for the final two: an Army intelligence agency and a Navy intelligence agency.  Also keep in mind that that I am for an end to the war on drugs and the DEA, but small steps.  Now each of the agencies need massive and major reforms to streamline intelligence, but I am not by any means an expert on this issue, so I’ll stop at just saying we need reforms.  Other smaller, yet very important reforms that won’t necessarily save a lot of money are also needed.  Most importantly, this means completely abolishing the draft and repealing the PATRIOT Act.

Now lets take a look at defense cuts.  Currently, Defense spending accounts for approximately 5 percent of GDP, while before 9/11 it accounted for approximately 3 percent of gdp, with a 45 year average of 5.3 percent.  To start out, let’s cut 10 percent of defense spending the first budget cycle (2012 budget).  This cut should also be applied to every federal department and agency as a starting point, but that is an issue for another upcoming blog post.  Getting back to defense, after the initial 10 percent cut, the entire Department of Defense needs to thoroughly audited and be assessed in terms of what spending is essential and what is not.  This audit should be done by a non-governmental firm, of course all precautions will be taken to secure classified information, and each of the military bases oversees should be paid special attention to in this audit.  After completion of this audit, pull out your machete, because its slashing time.  At a very minimum, defense spending should be rolled back to 2000 levels (3 percent of gdp), this cut would occur over a period of 5 years.  Critics (most of which will be Republicans) will say that a cut that size will leave the the U.S. vulnerable to attack.  These critics will probably suggest a defense budget at that or around that 5.3 percent 45 year average.  The problem with that number is that for most of that 45 year stretch, the U.S. was engaged in the Cold War with a Communist threat in the Soviets and if you haven’t noticed, we no longer are in that situation.  High defense spending was necessary to defeat the Soviets, but no longer is.  What Reagan did (increasing defense spending) was needed and caused the Soviets to decay and rot from the inside.  Most Republicans now have this notion that high defense spending means better and more security, but that simply doesn’t jive with the rest of conservative thought and belief. Conservatives believe (and know) that more spending programs such as the War on Poverty and massive spending in education doesn’t make those programs better, it in fact in those instances, it made the problem worse.   

The battle for the control over spending and the debt has many fronts, but one of them must be Defense cuts.  The Ryan budget is a great first step, but defense spending must also be included in cuts to the budget.  In this article, I have mostly talked about spending cuts and not sweeping reforms in foreign policy, but reforms are just as important because they change how we spend taxpayer dollars on defense.  These reforms are not easy and will not be easy to implement.  One example is ending all foreign aid and not propping up countries like Israel and giving money to their enemies.  These policies are destructive to both our security and Israel’s.  The U.S. can no longer afford to be the police of the world and simply can’t afford to pay for the defense of other countries. Organizations such as NATO and the United Nations delegitimize our sovereignty and our security. Despite what many conservatives believe, terrorists don’t attack us because of what we believe, they attack us because we support the governments that oppress them.  The former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit, terrorism expert Michael Scheuer stresses that they come here precisely because we are over there.  Scheuer stated, “On no other foreign policy issue since the Cold War’s end has the truth been so easy to establish on the basis of hard facts but so hard for Americans to see...that Muslim hatred is motivated by U.S. interventionism more than any other factor.”  If terrorists did attack us for our freedom, prosperity or religion why wouldn’t they attack a more economically free country such as Liechtenstein or Hong Kong or the home of Christian faith, the Vatican.  As I’ve already stated, these solutions are not easy, but they are essential to paying off our debt and to our security and our liberty.

Worth the Cost?

Last night, it was announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a military operation.  In Washington D.C. and around the U.S. many people were seen cheering and celebrating.  Crowds gathered outside the White House and in Times Square in New York to celebrate the death of the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks.  When I came into work today, several of my colleagues asked me if I had gone to celebrate at the White House last night and what I thought about the killing of bin Laden.  While I am glad that families of 9/11 victims have justice and am proud of our troops that have accomplished this feat, I didn't and still don't find myself celebrating.  Now many will portray what I am writing as un-patriotic or un-American, but I have to wonder if the “war on terror” is truly worth the cost.

If you look at the cost in terms of dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS):

Congress has approved a total of $1.283 trillion for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Afghanistan and other counter terror operations; Operation Noble Eagle (ONE), providing enhanced security at military bases; and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). This estimate assumes that the current CR level continues through the rest of the year and that agencies allocate reductions proportionately.

This is ONLY the money appropriated by Congress; therefore it doesn’t include any future costs such as interest payments on the debt and long term medical costs for wounded (both physical and mental health).  In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the war would cost $2.4 trillion by 2017.  This estimate includes the impact of borrowing, but does include the expansion of the war in Afghanistan that began in 2008-09.  Of the $2.4 trillion, $1.9 trillion was expected to be spent in Iraq while only $500 billion in Afghanistan (we have already spent $444 billion in Afghanistan which doesn’t include any interest on the debt).  Most estimates now are in $3 trillion range.

The bigger cost in this “war on terror” is the number of fatalities and casualties.  The most up-to-date number for fatalities (American) is 6,336 (4,452 in Iraq and 1,566 in Afghanistan) according to iCasualties.  The official number of casualties (combination of wounded and fatalities) for Iraq (still trying to find Afghanistan number) is 33,023 according to AntiWar.com.

While I am proud of the troops who caught and killed a truly evil man and acknowledge that the world is better without bin Laden, I can’t quite celebrate.  I took a minute to be proud of my country and it’s amazing liberties and the men and women who defend those liberties.  Then I came back to reality.  This war has helped create a massive debt that is now approaching $15 trillion and cost too many American lives (although one is too many for me) to celebrate in the streets.  I’ll leave you with a couple questions and a statement.  My first question: Do we have more liberty and freedom now than before 9/11 and if not, Isn’t that what people who hate us want?  My second question: Was it worth the cost both in terms of dollars and lives?  I will, however celebrate when we bring all the troops home and end this war.

The Neo-Con Disease

In today’s conservative movement, one particular sect of the movement is plaguing the entire movement, neo-conservatism.  While many think this “new” ideology is just a foreign policy, I am sad to say that it is much more than that.  Neo-conservatism has become a complete ideology that pushes conservative ideals through big government.  Many believe that this movement of conservatism started with Irving Kristol and then spread to Richard Nixon where it became viral and spread throughout the conservative movement.  The problem with this analogy is that neo-conservatism has a much longer history; it in fact began with the policies of Theodore Roosevelt and the progressive movement.

President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, a man who many neo-cons idolize (including William and Irving Kristol) was not a conservative that some say he was.  Roosevelt dramatically changed America’s foreign policy from what the founders had envisioned.  Roosevelt advocated for an imperialist America that would no longer continue the policy of commercial relations with all nations and entangling alliances with none.  Roosevelt also had a profound impact on economic policy by “trust-busting,” in other words; Roosevelt intervened into a high-functioning free-market economy to break up companies that provided needed competition.  Roosevelt imposed price controls on the railroads, supported hyper-protectionist tariff policies, and drummed up a fake food crisis to create new regulations that only protected the large food corporations and not the consumers.  Roosevelt was also seen by neo-cons and liberals alike (hmm . . . could there be a similarity between the two) as the first “green” politician and conversationalist.  He was in fact, very much not.  Roosevelt’s “green” policies included wasting massive amounts of tax dollars on damns that flooded canyons and rivers, national foresting policies contributing to overgrazing and massive forest fires and a his policies to oppose the privatization of government land.  But perhaps Roosevelt’s worst policy implication was his revival the income tax, an idea he advocated for strongly and was passed under Roosevelt’s progressive successors.

Although Roosevelt did not start the neo-conservative movement, he was the father of the movement.  The neo-conservative ideology wouldn’t be official until Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger took office in the late sixties.  Nixon fully developed the neo-conservative foreign policy with the Vietnam War and his Détente strategy that called for more government and a beginning of the neo-conservative nation building policies.  Nixon also tried Keynesian economic policies that included price controls on oil among other goods and also ended the link between the dollar and gold which permanently took the U.S. off any reminisce of the gold standard it once held.  Nixon is also the president responsible for the EPA, OSHA, federal affirmative action, national drug laws, and piles of graft and federal interventions in every direction.  These are policies that Richard Nixon handed down to his new breed of statist conservatives (wait a minute, can those two words exist in the same sentence?).

Neo-conservatism would continue to grow under men like Bill and William Kristol of the Weekly Standard (the neo-conservative powerhouse magazine), Democratic New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ‘Conservative’ talk show host Sean Hannity and the culmination of the neo-conservative ideology – George W. Bush. 

Bush completed the link between the neo-conservative foreign policy and domestic policy.  Bush’s foreign policy (The Bush Doctrine) consisted of high defense spending along with spreading democracy across the globe came together with “big government conservatism” such as Medicare part B, the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, No Child Left Behind, and Faith-Based initiatives.  All of these policies push conservative causes through the expansion of federal powers and more government spending.  What made it worse was Bush’s continual talk of himself as a constitutional conservative; all the while he uses the constitution as toilet paper.  Acts such as the PATRIOT Act, quite possibly the most unconstitutional act ever passed by Congress, highlight Bush’s (and neo-conservatives) disregard for both the constitution and the conservative ideology. 

Perhaps the worst policy of the neo-conservative ideology is that of nation building.  The policy is to build democracies in areas where there wasn’t one before.  Although some traditional conservatives may think this is a good idea, it is actually a deeply flawed one both in the terms of the conservative agenda and in the terms of government spending.  The basis for nation building is to free the people in totalitarian states.  The problem with it is that people must choose on their own to form a free society.  They must set up a social contract with each other and choose freedom, something that must be chosen by a free people or it simply isn’t freedom.  Freedom without a choice is not freedom at all, but just another form of enslavement.  Nation building also created an enormous amount of government spending, spending that has to be paid for in one form or another.  The current form of paying for this policy is that printing fake money.  The simple truth is not only is nation building a bad policy for conservatives, and it’s a bad policy for America.  The Iraq/Afghanistan war has cost a minimum of $1.5 trillion with some estimations in the $3 trillion range.

Nation Building is only one consequence of neo-conservatism, but so far it is the most costly effect.  Other neo-conservative policies such as the EPA and No Child Left Behind have also been costly, although nowhere in the range of the Iraq War.  Now the question is what to do about this plague.  Fortunately for conservatives there is a cure; it comes in the form of a document that was written over 200 years ago, the Constitution.  Conservatives must educate not only society, but members of its own movement (especially those who follow the neo-conservative ideology) what the Constitution stands for: a truly limited government, a non-interventionalist foreign policy, spending within its means, individual liberty and enforcing the rights of states.  If the conservative movement is to survive, we must return to true conservatism. What I am calling for is an alliance of Libertarians, Economic Conservatives, Social Conservatives and Traditional Conservatives to take back the conservative movement.  We must look back at our heritage and remember the polices of men like Thomas Jefferson, Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and condemn the polices of Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney.  This last election showed us that the American people are ready to embrace true conservative ideals.  The time to act is now, for liberty, for the constitution, for America.