Defense Budget

In Tuesday's debate, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney once again made clear that he thinks cutting defense spending is a bad idea, even at a time when he supports reducing the size of government. The former Massachusetts governor was answering a question about the debt deal supercommittee.

There is a certain irony, as well as much truth, in Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s drumbeat of warnings about the consequences of further cuts to U.S. military budgets of the sort threatened under the current deficit reduction law.

With the congressional “supercommittee” – or, to be precise, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – now complete, the stage is set for a very high drama indeed. Now comes the moment when Americans must confront the costs of remaining the world’s sole superpower, the guarantor of an international system that has created a generation of great-power peace, widespread prosperity, and unprecedented human liberty.

Can the debt deal pass the House of Representatives? House speaker John Boehner has said he believes he has the votes from the Republican caucus, and Steny Hoyer, the Democratic minority whip, says he can deliver 80 to 100 votes from his side of the aisle.

“Extraordinarily difficult and very high risk.” That’s how General Martin Dempsey, the Army’s chief of staff and Obama’s pick to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff, bluntly described proposals by the president and certain lawmakers to cut national security spending by anywhere from $400 billion to $1 trillion or more over the next decade.

Jamie Fly, writing at National Review Online: 

The foremost obligation of the federal government is to provide for the safety of the American people. Yet as the budget debate continues, it’s becoming increasingly clear that certain politicians want to trim the defense budget in order to repurpose money for social entitlement programs, such as health care reform, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. A new white paper, titled “Warning: Hollow Force Ahead,” which has just been released by the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Foreign Policy Initiative, warns of the negative consequences of a thinner defense.

One of the least covered aspects of the debt limit negotiations has been defense spending. Obama administration officials and congressional Democrats have indicated that the White House would like to include significant defense cuts as part of an eventual deal, even beyond the $400 billion in cuts to security spending over the next twelve years that the president announced in April.

There are many reasons to be skeptical that any likely budget deal would be worth supporting. And it’s long past time for Republicans to be planning strategically, and laying the groundwork legislatively and politically, for an outcome of no deal (or possibly a mini-deal that doesn’t sacrifice conservative principles).

In today's Wall Street Journal, Dan Blumenthal and Michael Mazza note that the China's growing military might should give American leaders something to think about with regard to our defense budget: