The White House released a report on Friday detailing how devastating congressionally mandated cuts to defense spending would be, if Congress doesn’t agree to avoid sequestration.
The report says that sequestration cuts would impose a 9/4 percent cut to most defense programs and that they would be deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments, and employment.
There has been a lot of scaremongering from Washington about how cutting defense budgets will cause defense corporations to have to lay off workers and therefore contribute to a stagnant economy and high unemployment.
But estimates of a rise in unemployment from these proposed spending cuts have been systematically exaggerated, writes Lawrence J. Korb, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. And besides, Korb points out, “defense spending is not a jobs program.” At least, it’s not supposed to be.
The jobs that these rent-seeking defense corporations maintain only show what big business can do with diverted wealth. As the Cato Institute’s Chris Preble wrote recently, “It’s easy to focus exclusively on the companies and individuals hurt by the cuts and forget that the taxed wealth that funded them is being employed elsewhere.”
The proposed cuts to defense budgets are, frankly, puny. Overall defense industry profits have skyrocketed since 9/11 and the harshest scenario for defense cuts would put budgets back at about the 2007 level. But only after some time; after all, we’re talking here about a decrease in the rate of growth in projected defense spending. So budgets will still be growing. Just less fast.
The minuscule defense cuts being contemplated could easily target areas of waste. As a recent report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found, while the source of growth in annual defense budgets since 2001 has been mostly (54%) due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of the rest has been spent on wasteful superfluous weapons technology, bloated salaries and benefits plans, and expensive peacetime operating costs for the 900-plus military bases in 130-plus countries around the world.
But will we be less safe? The White House made clear the proposed cuts were a threat to national security. The truth is that the US could cut defense spending by half tomorrow and still outspend every other country in the world.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and others have voiced concern that any decrease in spending would make it harder to face threats from the likes of Iran and North Korea, two countries with comparatively pathetic defense budgets and which present no credible threat.
Probably referring to China, Panetta has also mentioned the responsibility “to project our power in the world in order to make sure rising powers understand that the United States still has a strong defense.” This adheres closely to imperial grand strategy, which insists on a foreign policy actively militarist enough so as to prevent military competitors and keep all the world’s nation’s dependent on the U.S. as military superpower. Clearly, this has nothing to do with defending the country and wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on it every year is what is putting the country at risk. Not, as Washington would have you believe, making trivial cuts in the rate at which the war machine expands.
The Mongols are at the gates; be very scared!! Mr. Glaser, you have said it so well that nothing needs added. Unfortunately, too many members of Congress have prostituted themselves to the military industries to obtain those campaign contributions/ bribes.
It's not the Mongols but the Barbarians. The Romans' "barbarians" are the USan's "terrorists" — the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Exactly. WTH? The USA is spending more today on defense than ever, now fighting non-existent terrorists while preparing for war with the Russian Federation and one of our biggest creditors than we ever did against the USSR & Red Chinese. Well, thank goodness we don't also have an empire of colonies to defend as well. Oh, wait. It's now returning veterans, farmers with fingers missing, student protestors, and old folks in airport lines with colostomy bags that are the "real" terrorists. I'll wager that we could slice our defense budget by 80%, not 9% across he board just by eliminating our overseas military adventures, the war on terror & drugs, and ended the police state. But wait, isn't that Obama's only working jobs programs?
Why does the White House come out with something like that? The political logic behind that is less than clear to me.
One may also note that in a sane world, cutting spending on defense would also mean a parallel decrease in taxes. No such luck in a world of of deficit spending and a Chtulhu-sized debt crater. Instead one hears calls to INCREASE taxes (that's going to do 'homeland employment' a lot of good). Maybe money printing will abate a bit though.
So NOT spending countless billions on jets we don't need and scaling back the global legions is "crippling"? How about the crippling taxes and economic chains placed on us all on the home front?
Poor, poor, poor, lil MIC. Before you know it, they'll have limits on how many continents they can invade at once. It must suck to be poor. Not that I would know or anything since I'm living it up on the lap of luxury on the 7 bucks an hour that WalMart pays me to clean their toilets.
Lets see, spring missiles, fall missiles, winter and summer missiles . . . and, of course a stunning new line of evening and semi-formal missiles. You naturally will want to accessorize with color coordinated (but totally butch) aircraft carriers and tanks . . .
If the USA wishes to continue its military presence in over 100 countries in the world, many of whom did not ask them for their presence, the country is destined for bankruptcy. With the national debt is at over 16 trillion $ and increasing every minute, the country may continue to have its military personel plying the waters of the world in first-class style only to have its health care system, its educational system, its infrastructure and internal well being going down the tube. In time, their military will have a very puny country to defend.