A Half Trillion Dollar Military Budget Is Not Enough?

by Gerard Emershaw

The United States is prepared to wave the white flag and surrender to its enemies. Well, according to neoconservatives at least. Retired General Wesley Clark has cautioned: “We cannot go back to a pre-World War II Army with a bunch of people marching around with broomsticks on their shoulders doing right face and right shoulder arms.” Former Vice President Dick Cheney—who like most neoconservative RINOs believes that deficits do not matter—scoffed: “I can guarantee you there's never going to be a call from a future secretary of defense to Obama to thank him for what he's done to the military.” What has President Obama done to the United States? According to Cheney, “enormous long-term damage.” Of course, American soldiers are going to be marching around with broomsticks instead of guns.

Wait, what? American soldiers are not going to be marching around with broomsticks on their shoulders? What Cheney is talking about is the announcement that the Obama administration is going to be spending a mere $496 billion in FY 2015 on the military. According to Newsmax:

For the five years ending in 2019, the Defense Department's budget forecast includes $115 billion more in spending than currently authorized in congressionally mandated levels under the budget cuts called sequestration.

The plan calls for requesting $535 billion in 2016, or $35 billion more than the sequestration level; $544 billion for 2017, or $31 billion over the cap; $551 billion in 2018, or $27 billion over the cap; and $559 billion in 2019, or $22 billion over the cap.

One would think that a half trillion dollars a year could buy a lot of broomsticks. Maybe even a lot of modern weaponry. Nations like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea manage to constitute alleged threats to the United States while spending only a fraction of what the United States does on military. How are these nations able to afford to equip their soldiers with more than broomsticks?

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s plan will cut the size of the military:

Hagel's plan would reduce the Army by 6 percent to about 490,000 personnel by 2015 from about 522,000 today, accelerating by two years the Army's plan to reach that total by 2017. Hagel’s proposal also calls for reductions to about 450,000 by 2019—30,000 fewer than the active-duty force in September 2001 before the terrorist attacks on the U.S.

These cuts would make the United States military smaller than it has been since 1940. Of course, the United States is not fighting total war against rival superpowers across the globe. The U.S. military also possesses an arsenal of nuclear weapons along with Stealth fighters, drones, etc. which makes a large standing army unnecessary.

The only reason that large standing armies are necessary is if it is going to be misused. Corporatist wars of aggression overseas require large armies with bottomless budgets. However, such wars stand in stark opposition to the advice and practice of the Founders. Such wars are expensive and produce blowback. If one believes that military cuts are off the table, then one is not truly fiscally conservative. The purpose of the military is to defend the Republic and not to protect foreign despots, multinational corporations, or the bottom line of the Military-Industrial Complex. Deficits do matter, Vice President Cheney. The national debt—and not the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, or North Koreans—is the greatest threat to national security. The military budget simply cannot be treated like a sacred cow or one day soon there may not be a Republic left for the military to defend.

Sequester Pester: Why Debate about the Automatic Budget Cuts Is All Poppycock

President Obama signed the sequester cuts into law, and so far there are no signs that the apocalypse has begun. At the end of the day, the truth is that all of the histrionics on both sides of the debate have been nothing but political theatre. And not even Tony Award worthy political theatre. While minute across the board cuts in the increase of federal spending will not cause the seas to run red with blood, these cuts will also make no discernible dent in the national debt that stands at over $16.6 trillion. Politicians can debate a little cut here or a little cut there all that they want, but such debate is nothing but a waste of time.

In this LearnLiberty.org video, Professor Antony Davis of Duquesne University explains the sober facts about the federal budget and the national debt.

If cutting all discretionary spending – all spending except for defense spending, debt interest, and entitlement spending – would still not produce a balanced budget, then what is the point of all the sound and fury produced by debating miniscule specific cuts here or there?

Professor Davis states that “nothing short of a redesign of government will solve this problem.” This redesign, he suggests, must begin with the question “What is the proper role of government?”  Since the New Deal, the answer to that question has increasingly been “To provide for all Americans from cradle to grave.” Beneath the surface, the answer has also been “To protect powerful corporate interests through subsidies and bailouts.” It has been so long since the United States has had a Constitution-sized federal government that nearly nobody still living can remember it. 

Unless and until Congress and the President begin talking about ending the Federal Reserve, reforming entitlements, and cutting the defense budget substantially, watching talking heads debating the issue on cable news networks is a complete waste of time. Doing nearly anything else would be a better use of that time.

The Federal Reserve has eroded approximately 95% of the value of the dollar over the past century and threatens to eventually destroy the dollar completely. The Federal Reserve also enables the government to increase in size by "creating" fiat money out of thin air. Most alarmingly, the Federal Reserve, in redistributing wealth from average Americans to the government and crony capitalist corporations, makes many Americans more likely to require government assistance. 

Social Security is an unconstitutional Ponzi scheme that has become a ticking time bomb. The program currently has an unfunded liability of over $16.2 trillion. The ratio of workers paying taxes into Social Security to retirees receiving benefits was 16.5:1 in 1950. According to projections, this ratio will be reduced to fewer than 2:1 by 2030. In short, this program cannot be sustained. In order to prevent the debt from spiraling irreparably out of control, several reforms will need to be undertaken. The retirement age will need to be raised, means testing will become necessary, and benefits will likely need to be reduced. 

Medicare will need to be transformed into a block grant program in order to encourage states to administer it more carefully. The amount of these block grants will need to be reduced over time and perhaps ultimately discontinued. In the long run the federal government will need to get out of the medical care business entirely and leave it to the free market and to the states as per the Tenth Amendment.

The size of the military budget will need to be cut significantly. There is simply no need to be prepared to wage war against every other nation in the world at one time. The United States currently accounts for over 40% of all military spending in the world. Of the other nations in the top twenty of military spending, all are staunch allies of the United States except for China, Russia, and Iran. The United States currently has a military budget that is five times that of China, over ten times that of Russia, and over sixty-four times that of Iran. The main problem in reducing military spending will be the drastic effect that it will have on the economy. The government employs over 3.1 million military and civilian workers in thedefense sector while another 3 million Americans work for defense contractors. Perhaps the solution would be to finally “beat swords into ploughshares.” Some of the cuts in the defense budget could be employed to repair infrastructure or for other non-military purposes. However, the defense contractors will need to be gradually weaned from the public teat.

While these difficult but necessary budget cuts are being made, the federal government will need to simultaneously reduce taxes and regulations in order to spark economic growth in the private sector. The federal government will neither be able to cut nor grow its way out of its debt crisis. It will require less government spending and greater economic growth. Even then, there is no guarantee that the debt crisis will ever be solved.