War funding is deficit spending, and we can't have that, so what are you going to do about it?

by: Blue Girl

Fri Jul 23, 2010 at 09:28:06 AM CDT

When he said that in his war-drum-pounding State of the Union, America had a collective jingoistic spasm, and only a few people shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The traditional media for the most part ignored the people who were uncomfortable with it, though. We were, after all, just Chuck Hagel and a bunch of dirty fucking hippies who hadn't voted for Bush the first time and wouldn't the second time, either, so screw us. It was all "America! Fuck yeah!" 24/7.

So much for a war that will pay for itself. It is going to cost three trillion dollars before it is all said and done, and I have been asking for years how they are planning to pay for it with tax cuts that had already consumed the surplus Bush inherited from Clinton and exploded the deficit.

Now, I have been critical of deficits for thirty years, but I don't worry about entitlements and social programs. I look right square at the Pentagon, the biggest snout in the government trough. And I look there because I spent years in the belly of the beast.

I know that there is enough change in the Pentagon's couch cushions to erase the entire deficit and buy every six-year-old in America a pony for their birthday.

Finally, someone besides the friends we made in the highly-technical - and really fucking expensive - Air Force ("Would someone hand me that nine hundred dollar hammer, please?") are talking about it, too. No one groks the idiocy of how the Pentagon spends money better than an E-4 with a family who qualifies for foodstamps.

There is only one place to start if you want to talk about austerity. The Pentagon.

Lawmakers, administration officials and analysts said the combination of big budget deficits, the winding down of the war in Iraq and President Obama's pledge to begin pulling troops from Afghanistan next year were leading Congress to contemplate reductions in Pentagon financing requests.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has sought to contain the budget-cutting demands by showing Congress and the White House that he can squeeze more efficiency from the Pentagon's bureaucracy and weapons programs and use the savings to maintain fighting forces.

But the increased pressure is already showing up in efforts by Democrats in Congress to move more quickly than senior Pentagon officials had expected in trimming the administration's budget request for next year.

And in the longer term, with concern mounting about the government's $13 trillion debt, a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission is warning that cuts in military spending could be needed to help the nation dig out of its financial hole.

"We're going to have to take a hard look at defense if we are going to be serious about deficit reduction," said Erskine B. Bowles, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who is a co-chairman of the deficit commission. Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire who is also on the debt commission, said that if the panel pushes for cuts in discretionary spending, "defense should be looked at," perhaps through another base-closing commission.

"In the case of the Pentagon, they have been living very fat and very happy for so very long that they've almost lost touch with reality," said Gordon Adams, and he should know. He oversaw national-security budgets under President Clinton.

Out of control miltary spending - coupled with massive unfunded tax cuts - are the real source of our budget deficits...Military spending has gone up, on average, seven percent per year for the last decade. If you don't adjust for inflation, that number jumps to nearly 12% per year.

Now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is calling for that growth to be curtailed to one percent per year after inflation, plus the costs of the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates argues that he can find additional savings of two to three percent to reinvest in the military, thereby meeting the needs of the services while reducing the deficit that threatens the nation that they exist to protect.

But nothing is ever easy in Washington.

Even as the Secretary of Defense fights to kill weapons systems that aren't needed and rein in wastful spending, members of Congress - and both parties are equally guilty here - refuse to cut programs the military no longer wants, and has no use for, but those obsolete and unneeded programs bring jobs to their district, and Congressmen who protect high-paying jobs in their districts don't have to live there. They get to live in Washington DC as long as they keep the gravy-train pulling up at regularly scheduled stops. And the last thing a Congresscritter of either party wants to do is go back to their district once they have a taste of the life they can live in Washington.

Why the hell do you think so freakin' many of them never go home, but instead become lobbyists?