Defense Spending Hikes: The Place Where Democrats and Republicans Can Come Together?
President Obama's 2015 budget proposal is as much a thought experiment as an actual budget plan: As with the proposals that were attached to his State of the Union address last night, it's not intended as a realistic fiscal blueprint, but as a positioning statement for his administration and his party, in 2015 and beyond.
As former vice presidential adviser Jared Bernstein told The Washington Post, the new budget is "setting up the 2016 debate in a way that only someone with his bully pulpit can do." Think of it as a fan-made teaser trailer for the next Democratic administration, not a plot for this one.
Republicans were certain to oppose most of the proposal before we knew what was in it. And sure enough, now that the details are public, the GOP doesn't particularly like what it sees. As Politico notes, various Republicans in Congress have called the budget "laughable," a "retread" that's "partisan, not practical." It's a "repeat of the same old top-down policies," said House Speaker John Boehner. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said it's "more of the same, more tax increases that kill investment and jobs, and policies which are hardly aspirational."
Republicans are obviously not working too hard on fresh material for their responses themselves, but they're also not wrong. The new administration budget isn't strictly a rehash, but it looks awfully familiar to anyone who's been following along—particularly in the way it emphasizes increases in spending. As Reason's Nick Gillespie noted earlier, Obama's budget is a wish-list for a federal spendathon. The budget proposes breaking caps imposed by the sequestration process on both defense and domestic spending. Obama wants to hike domestic spending by $37 billion over the sequestration limits, and expand defense spending by $38 billion.
Congress is ultimately in charge of the federal budget, so much of what Obama proposed is already dead in the water. But when it comes to increasing defense spending, the president may find common ground with Republican on Capitol Hill.
The dynamic here is completely straightforward. The military wants more money. Lots of Republicans want to give the military more money, entirely apart from whether the military needs it. And the Obama administration doesn't want restrictions on the handouts it can give to the defense industry.
The military has been fretting increasingly loudly over the spending caps it's been expected to hold to, and the White House has chimed in to help make the case. "This administration has been very clear, as have our military leaders, about the fact that sequestration is a bad policy," White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said last week, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Meanwhile, Republican defense hawks have used the Pentagon's pleas to continue making their never-ending case for more military spending. The reliably hawkish Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, declared recently that "America's national defense can no longer be held hostage to domestic political disputes totally separated from the reality of the threats we face."
On the contrary, it's the military and its budgetary backers who aren't facing up to reality, which is that military spending is already pretty generous, and the Pentagon is blowing huge amounts of money on high-tech weapons initiatives of dubious value.
In addition to $51 billion in war funding that's already allocated, President Obama's budget requests $561 billion for defense spending, which includes the biggest baseline Pentagon budget ever. Sequestration caps for military were already loosened from initial levels in a budget deal made in 2013. And the Pentagon has managed to keep spending freely on boondoggles like the Joint Strike Fighter—a $400 billion futuristic fighter that has serious trouble with basic functionality, like flying—and a program to build new nuclear bombers and subs expected to cost about $350 billion. This is not a picture of a fighting force that is desperately starving for cash.
Breaking budget caps to spend even more on the Pentagon, then, doesn't seem like an idea with a whole lot of merit. But of all Obama's budgetary thought experiments, it's the one that's most likely to become reality.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
An orgy of taxpayer money.
CW, a quick search on Youtube yielded this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvpbFumherY
(Do not view at work)
Look, do you want the United States to police the world or not?
We can either police the world or be the world police. Your choice.
Not.
Does that mean we all have to, in unison, sing Roxanne on the 4th of july?
Hey if we don’t police the world how are we going to beat up random brown countries?
we’ll just have to make up another excuse. I mean, can’t we claim they were attacking us?
Fist of Etiquette|2.2.15 @ 2:52PM|#
“Look, do you want the United States to police the world or not?”
Don’t you have friends? I mean, aren’t you willing to defend them?
Peter Suderman is unserious about The Islamonazi Threat.
you know who else wasn’t serious about the islamonazi threat?
The Danes?
All you so-called libertarians?
Claire Danes and Jared Leto
The Zoroastrians?
what does freddy mercury have to do with this?
The Dead Milkmen?
Whoa! Taking Islamonazis to the zoo…
I don’t know, while the numbers might be a tad high I think a legitimate argument can be made that we need a new generation of long range Bomber and Missile Sub.
We’re not going to be able to fly the B-52’s forever and we don’t have enough B1’s + B2’s to maintain a nuclear deterrent force not to mention the fact that the B-52 is the most effective of the 3 in low intensity conflicts.
Similarly our Ballistic Missile Subs are all between 19 and 35 years old and they were designed with a 40 year service life. I don’t know how well the hulls are holding up but at most you could extend the service life another 20 years but that means another refuel and refit cycle added onto them which is not currently budgeted for and even still that only buys us about a decade before we need to get serious about designing a new model to replace them.
The only alternatives are to either make heavy investments into Strategic Defense or drop the idea of nuclear deterrence altogether.
Similarly while the F-35 is a dumb idea and a poorly implemented dumb idea that needs to be canceled that doesn’t change the fact that no matter how we cut it the F-15, F-16, and A-10’s are nearing the end of their service life so even if we do manage to kill off the F-35 program we’re still going to have to replace it with something (and likely 4 different somethings)
So what I’m hearing is that if you have no ethics and really want to make some money, go into defense contracting.
That has always been the case but it doesn’t change the fact that some defense spending is going to be legitimately needed
Why?
Attack us… you get 3000 nukes.
Problem solved.
Or, here’s an idea…
Pull back spending to support a defensive military without bases all over the world.
Only produce enough arms to adequately prevent invasion and protect the US. Allow old equipment to retire and be recycled.
Wouldn’t that solve a lot of problems?
That’s crazy talk, Spencer. Why do you hate the Indispensable Nation?
realistically it would be a massive blow to young minority males and their unemployment and college attendance rates would plummet even lower than they are.
The military as it stands is nothing but a glorified jobs scheme.
Also, I’m sure I could change my opinion (publicly) for the right price. Say, the cost of an f-35 or two?
The military as it stands is nothing but a glorified jobs scheme.
Square that with the fact they are engaged all over the planet in one way or another. Either it is a phony jobs program or the World Police.
why not both? they use the fact that they need to employ all these people to further their desires to police the world.
It’s called synergy.
So you think the military is nothing but low prospect, young minority males?
Got it.
Well, it’s 85% male. 41% minority- if you count hispanics as a minority. Half of the military is under 25 (2/3s under 30) and under 6% of non officers have a 4 year degree. (83% of officers, but officers are only 15% of overall forces).
So, it’s not NOTHING but low prospect, young minority males… but it’s very much disproportionately young minority males… which are, by definition, “low prospect” for employment.
It would increase unemployment among young uneducated Caucasians too- but their employment prospects are higher, statistically.
I’d love a cite to that info, as a degree is a commissioning requirement… I’d like to look at that info and see the sourcing. Some might be direct commissions, but 17 percent of the force? Somebody must be mixing in old warrant officer numbers…
And 41% minority sounds high, too.
It is. He’s pulling the rather lame trick of counting white Hispanics like George Zimmerman as being minorities.
the military counts NO hispanics- so the only way to differentiate is to count all who identify as hispanics.
http://www.militaryonesource.m…..Report.pdf
Hispanics are generally considered minorities (rightly or wrongly) by most people across the political spectrum, regardless of race, so I don’t really see how it’s a lame trick when it’s in line with the generally used definition of “minority”. Also, a lot of Hispanics who select white on the Census as their race do so because they don’t really like the other options, not necessarily because they’re 100% European descent (or close to it).
Education Level.
The majority (82.4%) of officers have a Bachelor’s or higher degree. Few
(5.9%) enlisted members have a Bachelor’s or higher degree, while most (98.9%) have a high
school diploma and/or some college experience.- page 21 of link below.
I’d love a cite to that info, as a degree is a commissioning requirement… I’d like to look at that info and see the sourcing. Some might be direct commissions, but 17 percent of the force? Somebody must be mixing in old warrant officer numbers
It’s all services combined. What are the Marines’ OCS requirements these days? As of about 10 or 15 years ago, Army OCS only required two years of college with promotion to captain contingent on a bachelor’s. I know that’s changed but I can’t remember when.
The rest must be warrants.
When I was commissioned in 88 all AF officers were required to have a Bachelor’s. Can’t speak for the other services, but I thought it was a military-wide requirement. May be mistaken.
Oh certainly.
My point was not to argue that the military needs MORE money. I think it has WAY too much money as it is. Between mission creep and politicians using military spending as their own personal porkbarrel it is clear that we spend way way too much on defense.
What I was pointing out is that some of the specific programs that were highlighted as examples of waste are actually legitimately needed even if we shouldn’t be spending anywhere near the budgeted amounts on them.
I mean we are actually in a funny place right now. We have been overspending on the military for more than 2 decades and yet we have been allowing the effectiveness of the force to deteriorate in critical ways by not having timely replacements of critical weapons systems.
This. Well said.
One correction. The B-1 no longer has any nuclear capability. Hasn’t for 20 years.
Right about the F35 program – an unbelievable price for a piece of crap.
What we need is a major change in the mindset of Defense procurement. Can you imagine if the people in charge of the F35 program tried to build a new bomber from scratch?
The new mindset should be based on value. Boeing would love to sell us F-15SE Silent Eagles – with zero development costs.
When was the last time there was even a chance of a bomber getting shot down? Just put some avionics and bomb doors on a 757 cargo plane.
Well, there’s Guam, which shot down a B-2.
B-1s regularly flew into the Super MEZ over Baghdad, when many fighter aircraft wouldn’t/couldn’t.
Development costs wouldn’t be zero, but they’d be substantially less than the F35 spend over the next few years. You would lose (nearly) all aspect stealth but still end up with a cheaper aircraft that is still very capable.
And you’d have a 4.5 gen aircraft competing against gen 5 aircraft for at least the next 20 years. The F-35 may not be everything it should have been, but it’s an order of magnitude better than anything we currently have flying and is survivable against gen 5 threats where the Viper, Eagle and Hornet are not.
Majority of our adversaries are not going to be flying Gen 5 aircraft anyway. You’re better off restarting a limited run of F-22’s for air dominance than compromising with a whole fleet of mediocre aircraft. The F-4 was a tolerable aircraft, but I don’t think you’d call it a success. The F-35 at best is shaping up the same way.
The F-35 and the F-22 are not interchangeable. Two completely different roles. The F-22 isn’t a strike airframe. It has an EXTREMELY limited A-G capability.
You can’t say/know that. You have no idea what will transpire over the next 20-30 years (the design time of a replacement). You need to be the cutting edge of technology or run the risk of getting your ass kicked. Even if you could be assured of not needing to engage Russia, China, India…, you can’t assume they won’t sell their gen 5 shit inside your next design cycle.
Did I say they were?
The strike role can be accomplished just fine once you eliminate the IADS which you can accomplish with standoff cruise missile strikes or even a couple of B-2’s. After that an F-15E or a -16 is a bigger bomb truck anyway.
Don’t tell me you’re falling for the ‘missile gap’ fear. 22’s give us air dominance for the foreseeable future, and our money is better spent on more capable unmanned platform development than to give some jocks something to do. The real cost that’s eating the defense budget alive is personnel anyway.
I agree with all your points. The problem is pork barrel spending is causing us to buy the F-35 and upgrade our nuclear arsenal of gravity bombs.
I also agree that having a smaller military all around would allow for modernization. There is no need for a strategy that revolves around facing two major theatre wars.
Any reduction needs to be a direct result of a change to national military strategy. If we were commit to a defensive, non interventionist policy, leaving the rest of the world to fund their own defense, we could cut the military by 50-75%
What we can’t do is cut the military and keep the same obligations.
You can save by getting rid of redundancy and obsolescence. We don’t need a nuclear triad. It’s not even effective today. The Air Force can still get all puffy about strategic assets with the M-III’s, and the majority of the deterrent can go on the subs where it is most survivable.
That means we don’t need yet another bomber. If you truly must have one for conventional missions, then roll off a few more B-2’s. They had better have saved the tooling.
And build ~200 more F-22’s and recapitalize the air frames with either more block 60’s or F-15SE’s. You’ll have a better chance of air dominance with ~400 22’s and capability and affordability with new build 15SE’s and/or 16’s. That allows you to maintain an effective force until UCAV’s become practical, at least for strike missions.
Agreed on the triad. Nuke bombers are a joke. Completely unnecessary.
The B-2 isn’t that great a bomber. Is not at all flexible. You’d get better value by developing a final bomber than retooling for the B-2.
F-22s don’t solve your A-G problem, but the right number is somewhat greater than 187.
You want savings? Stop competing for missions/money between services. One single service.
I don’t understand your B-2 comments. I don’t know what you mean by a final bomber.
I don’t need F-22’s for strike missions. I don’t need performance for strike missions once the air defenses are suppressed. Hell, I don’t even need stealth.
The F-35 is one of those compromises that the fighter mafia taught us don’t work so well. We want to it be an affordable front line fighter, but also a strike aircraft, and stealthy enough to suppress air defenses. Oh, and we want a VTOL version. It was always going to end in tears.
I don’t think a unified service is the right answer, but I could see going back to just two. I think splitting out the Air Force was a bad, bad idea. And the Marines need to get over Guadalcanal. It was 72 years ago. Get over your abandonment issues and assume that a fleet carrier will be available when you need it. That eliminates the need for the B variant (Brits won’t like us, but tough).
And things get even more interesting when we get tactically useful directed energy weapons. I can imagine that a B-1 fitted with a couple of 200kW laser turrets would be extremely interesting in the battle space. Not only can it attack ground targets but it can attack and actively defend against air threats as well. And it has the size to carry the required power supplies.
The B-1 will fall apart long before it will carry DEWs. It’s beat to shit as it is. Trust me on this.
YOU SHOULDA HAD MORE TROOP TRANSPORTS!!!1!!
*swigs vodka – looks around wildly*
I have a cunning plan. In the budget, call wealth redistribution schemes military spending and military spending wealth distribution schemes. Everyone wins! Well, everyone but people paying taxes, anyway.
I am not sure that planning is cunning enough to pin a tail on it and call it a weasel.
You’re right. They should call both areas of megaspending “farm subsidies.”
“infrastructure”
“Farm infrastructure subsidies”
Gentlemen, I think we have it!
Nothing more sacred than the American farmer and roads.
AMERICAN FARM ROADZ!!!!
Better double check your figures, Suderman. Sean Hannity has repeatedly assured me that Obama has “gutted” defense.
Literally.
No, fuck you, cut spending.
And a bitch slap to the USAF and USN…and a pimp slap to the USA.
I say we take all of our military spending for the next decade, and spend it all on taking possession of the asteroid belt, including mechanisms for precision targeting of places on Earth for direct delivery of rocks. Then we can simply maintain that with the material resources of the asteroid belt, and dump the rest of our military spending.
lol, then we could persuade our adversaries to wait the two or three years it would take for the rocks to get here. Heinleinesque, but impractical.
The long anticipation of total destruction will make our enemies all the more pliable in their kneeling before America.
Plus Pro L Industries is already, shall we say, prepositioned to offer its services…
Indeed. Auric tested a micrometeorite that hit the OC of Seattle on the head at a critical time last night.
They may not like it if we sped up delivery.
Hey Swiss – did you hear or read about the new shrine planned in Iceland?
“Icelanders will soon be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Thor, Odin and Frigg with construction starting this month on the island’s first major temple to the Norse gods since the Viking age.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/wo…..ge-n298481
By Gungnir!
what, no temple for the FSM?
All who have been touched by his noodlely appendage have been let down.
Would it be in the shape of an inverted colander?
All the Swiss (busy not going to their Reformed Churches) shrugged. Well, maybe my masters are trying to figure a profit angle on this…
*makes note to see about long ship futures*
I say we make the officers fight to the death until only the strong survive.
Instead of “the Octagon”, you could have “the Pentagon”?
I was reading a NYT piece a while ago which also liberally quoted that nincompoop Bernstein. Reading between the lines, as I am wont to do, it came across as, “Obama, being completely untethered from responsibility for anything since the election, plans to do whatever the fuck he feels like for the next two years.”
The only alternatives are to either make heavy investments into Strategic Defense or drop the idea of nuclear deterrence altogether.
Star Warz, here we come!
Heck, space lasers are great. No idea why we don’t have them. Didn’t anyone see Real Genius?
“Didn’t anyone see Real Genius?”
Nail + two-by-four….
It’s a moral imperative.
Best movie evar.
The real reason of course is that the technology for weapon grade lasers didn’t exist in the 80’s and it is only now coming online.
We probably could actually implement the bulk of the Star Wars missile defense system over the next 20 years if we wanted to
yes, but could be build a deathstar!?
Only if it was made of Lego
Tempting. I doubt an x wing could get off an accurate shot at that scale…
They just need to practice targeting smaller wamp rats
We want to. We could even calibrate the lasers to just warm people up to uncomfortable levels.
OT: Today Needs Moar Ghey
http://politickernj.com/2015/0…..conundrum/
Hmmm.. there has been a bit of a dearth of teh Ghey lately, hasn’t there. I knew I felt a bit drab for some reason.
I know there’ve been a couple of biggies and it usually stirs everyone up. Nevertheless, I thought it was an interesting look into GOP priorities.
Looks like ProL has launched a disinformation campaign in an effort to get a leg up on future competitors.
Manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space
There’s nothing there already.
We have been lied to, subjected to a cruel and chilly lie, one so vast and total it’s no longer fully perceivable but has turned into the unseen substrate of everyday life. It’s a political lie. They told us that outer space is beautiful.
They showed us nebulae, big pink and blue clouds draped in braids of purple stars, always resolving themselves at the pace of cosmic infinity into genital forms, cocks and cunts light years wide. They superimposed puddle-thin quotes over these pictures, so that the galaxies could speak to you in the depths of your loneliness, whispering from across a trackless infinity that you’re so much better than everyone else, because you fucking love science. The words are lies, the colors are lies, the nebulae are lies. These images are collated and pigmented by computers; they’re not a scene you could ever see out the porthole of your spaceship. Space isn’t even ugly; it isn’t anything. It’s a dead black void scattered with a few grey rocks, and they crash into each other according to a precise mathematical senselessness until all that’s left is dust.
It’s a FAKE!!!!
Okay, weird if probably accurate. There really isn’t a lot to see in 99.9999999 percent of space.
Wait I take back what I said. That is just one ball of crazy trolling.
Was that written by Agile Cyborg while he was on teh shrooms?
Is that what that was? Holy crap.
It’s a dead black void scattered with a few grey rocks, and they crash into each other according to a precise mathematical senselessness until all that’s left is dust.
Nice.
Right now, on the googlynews, there is a link to a USA Toady story headlined, Obama: $4trillion budget replaces ‘mindless austerity.’
I need to go lie down, now.
Well, something is definitely mindless, though I rather suspect it’s the government spending.
Could we please stop calling it “defense spending”. It’s war spending. The defense department used to be called the war department. They changed it to befuddle the peasants. The US is always an aggressor. When was the last time the US engaged in a defensive war? The war of 1812?
World War 2
While you can get into all the revisionism about the US forcing Japan into attacking us the reality is they were going to go to war for resources no matter what and they declared war on us first making them the aggressor.
Similarly while Germany posed absolutely no direct threat to us there were plenty of good reasons to oppose them in World War 2 and again, they declared war on us first making them the aggressor.
Further it can easily be argued that we were not the aggressor in Korea since the NORKS invaded South Korea first and we merely fought to oppose that invasion.
The Japanese in WW2 is the closest. You already know the answer and it’s not revisionism, it’s just conveniently skipped over. We provoked Japan to attack us. Economic warfare is warfare. As noble a cause as defeating Nazi Germany was, the fact remains it wasn’t a defensive war.
While we had no business in WWI, the US was not the aggressor. We joined the defenders.
Yes, the GOP will fund training and weapons; the Dems will fund NGO’s to study what’s wrong with our training and weapons.
I don’t understand these presidential budget proposals. Who thought this would be a useful thing to have? When was the last time Congress passed even 5% of what a president proposed in his budget?
They’ve always simply been political statements.
I was totally expecting an “Orange is the new Black” alt-text. fail.
Google pay 97$ per hour my last pay check was $8500 working 1o hours a week online. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12k for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I tried it out.
This is wha- I do…… ?????? http://www.jobs700.com