Gessing: America's Supersized Military: More Spending, Less Security

By Paul Gessing

It is no secret that spending and the overall size of government have grown dramatically in recent years. A new Medicare entitlement, education spending, and increased agriculture subsidies are among the most prominent and controversial federal initiatives according to most mainstream fiscal conservatives, but no area of the federal budget has seen the dramatic rate of growth as defense.

It is a pity that these fiscal conservatives who regularly (and rightly) lament rampant mismanagement of Medicare and the addition of a prescription drug benefit that is expected to cost taxpayers $535 billion cost over the next 10 years, often fail to see how the very same problems are in abundant supply at the Pentagon. Instead, many of them have repeatedly claimed that President Clinton “slashed” defense spending and left America “unprepared” for the war on terror, thus necessitating the current buildup. These defense spending advocates often fail to realize that we could spend far less on the military and continue fighting the “war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan while also keeping troops on the ground in Kosovo, if we did not spend billions of dollars annually on unnecessary weapons programs that provide little military value in the post-Cold War era.

The U.S. bomber fleet is just one of many examples of our nation’s misplaced defense spending priorities. Keeping 94 of the venerable, but technologically updated B-52s flying costs about $250 million a year – less than half the cost of just one new B-2 stealth bomber. Yet, in fighting terrorists the B-2 and B-52 are equals.

To its credit, the Bush Administration has indeed eliminated both the Crusader artillery system and the Comanche helicopter, but in order to carry out all of the new missions our military is being used for, the Pentagon needs to change direction more quickly. The 2005 budget proposes to spend billions on weapon systems like the F-22 ($4.7 billion), the Joint Strike Fighter ($4.5 billion), and the Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft ($1.7 billion). Each of these programs was originally developed to gain an advantage in a conventional war with the Soviet Union or one of its proxy armies. The Osprey has also been plagued by crashes during its development, having killed a total of 30 men. The General Accounting Office has called the Osprey “far less reliable” than it needs to be for active service. The Virginia-class submarine, SSN-774, ($2.7 billion) is yet another weapons system that could be eliminated in light of our existing fleet of SSN-668 Los Angeles-class vessels, which is unquestionably the best in the world. President Bush himself called for the program’s cancellation in a 1999 speech at the Citadel.

In addition to spending billions of dollars on weapons systems to defend against a threat that no longer exists, American taxpayers are shelling out for troop deployments in locations that might have been considered strategic in an attack from the former Soviet Union, but are not helpful in keeping an eye on brewing conflicts in the Middle East as desired by the nation’s military leaders. The United States has approximately 72,000 troops stationed in Germany, 41,000 troops in Japan, 37,000 troops in South Korea, 13,000 in Italy, and 11,000 in the U.K. – enough to more than double the number (134,000) now stationed in Iraq (the Pentagon recently announced plans to shift up to 4,000 troops from South Korea to Iraq). Rather than asking for a substantial hike in defense spending and waiting to ask Congress for yet an additional $50 billion supplemental after the election, President Bush should act quickly to consolidate our military bases to save taxpayer money and re-deploy troops to Iraq and other “hot spots” as needed.

The unwillingness on the part of most Members of Congress to challenge the outrageous overspending and misallocation of resources in the defense budget was obvious in the budget debate. In response to public outrage over the gaping budget deficit, the Chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees tried to slice a few billions dollars out of President Bush’s 7 percent increase in defense spending. Even though the proposed reduction was not an actual cut, just a smaller increase than the President wanted, vast majorities in Congress, not wanting to be seen as “weak on defense,” voted to re-instate Bush’s higher number. Defense spending in 2005, thus, will have increased by more than 50 percent since just 2000 assuming the $50 billion Iraq supplemental is factored in.

Even the $450 billion directly allocated to the Defense Department fails to tell the full story of America’s massive military bureaucracy. Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute believes that the true number is closer to $700 billion because Congress hides hundreds of billions of dollars of defense spending in other departments. Homeland Security ($17.5 billion), Veterans Affairs ($50.9 billion), Energy ($18.5 billion), Transportation ($1.4 billion), and Justice ($2.1 billion) are among the agencies that spend billions of dollars annually on defense-related activities that are not included in the defense budget. These activities include everything from caring for the sick and wounded soldiers from our foreign wars to foreign aid for “allies,” defending the homeland – a job properly done by a department of “defense” or even providing men and materiel for wars in Columbia and the Middle East.

A majority of our Founding Fathers believed that a defense force under the control of the federal government was necessary and thus outlined it as such in the Constitution. Given the amount of money our nation spends on defense, however, fiscal conservatives should make cutting wasteful defense spending their top priority, not their lowest.

Paul J. Gessing is a Senior Editor of the Free Liberal. He works in the public policy sector and is pursuing his MBA at the University of Maryland.