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The lesson of Congress in the modern age is that it’s much harder to eliminate a program than it is to enact one. Every program has a champion somewhere on Capitol Hill, and it probably only needs one to be saved – but 218 and 60 to be put into motion.
A case in point: our bloated military budget. The Obama Administration has generally tried to cancel out unnecessary defense programs, with meager success in the last budget year. Congress will probably assert themselves in an election year, however.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has vowed to impose fiscal austerity at the Pentagon, but his biggest challenge may be persuading Congress to go along.
Lawmakers from both parties are poised to override Gates and fund the C-17 cargo plane and an alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — two weapons systems the defense secretary has been trying to cut from next year’s budget. They have also made clear they will ignore Gates’s pleas to hold the line on military pay raises and health-care costs, arguing that now is no time to skimp on pay and benefits for troops who have been fighting two drawn-out wars.
The competing agendas could lead to a major clash between Congress and the Obama administration this summer. Gates has repeatedly said he will urge President Obama to veto any defense spending bills that include money for the F-35′s extra engine or the C-17, both of which he tried unsuccessfully to eliminate last year.
Last year, after a similarly protracted struggle, Gates succeeded in getting Congress to end funding for the F-22, a plane which tended to malfunction in the rain. Seriously. But Congress did not move on the F-35 engine or the C-17, and they seem similarly positioned this year. Ike Skelton and Carl Levin support the F-35 engine, for example, and included it in their appropriation requests out of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which they separately chair.
I fully recognize that the off-limits discussion about military spending concerns the bases in over 100 countries and continued adventures abroad in places where “victory” means almost nothing. But it’s a symptom of the same problem – the persistent inertia that aids the military-industrial complex to keep the war machine moving. And so we get new engines to planes that don’t need new engines.
UPDATE: And another example – the Senate Appropriations Committee just blocked cuts to NASA funding.
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I think that every rational American realizes that the cuts must come from the defense budget. It will most likely be very deep. There will be some very serious consequences from these cuts when they come.
1. The impetus to go to war should be drastically reduced. It is not a stretch of logic to assume that a superior military and the military leaders strive to prove themselves.
2. The cuts will be painful for our economy short term. The fact of the matter is that the defense industry subsidizes many high paying jobs, including union jobs. The trickle down in the local communities of these jobs being lost will be severe. There will be serious consequences.
If it were not for the federal reserve system the system would never have gotten this out of control. It is rather easy for a politician to be lobbied to support these programs when there is in reality unlimited funding available, financed through the FED. This is fairly easy to spot when you look at the never ending deficits of this country. When was the last time before Clinton that there was a balanced budget? It is rare. Again, it is only possible because the FED is there to monetize the deficit. You could also argue that this leads directly to war. It is rather easy to go to war when you believe you can’t lose.