The Aerospace Industries Association, a top lobbying group for America’s enormous weapons-making industry, is pressing forward with plans to lobby the new Congressional “supercommittee” against cutting defense spending, warning them that it has already been “cut to the bone.”
Cut to the bone, in US military budget terms, means the current budget is the largest in the history of mankind, and every year going forward is expected to be even larger, but the growth isn’t quite as big as some theoretical even bigger rate of growth.
Faced with massive budget shortfalls, the supercommittee was expected to eventually consider actual cuts to the military’s budget. Even before the latest round of lobbying began, however, Sen. Jon Kyl (R – AZ) angrily demanded that no one on the committee ever mention such cuts again, threatening to quit if they were even brought up.
When faced with the grim prospect of slowing down the gravy train even a little bit, the defense industry can bring forth considerable political influence, insisting that even slightly less spending on massive weapons systems that the nation doesn’t need and can’t afford would imperil the entire nation’s manufacturing base.
