Frank on the Military Budget: True But Misleading

I agree with Barney Frank’s assessment of the need for us to reduce military spending:

It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.

I also agree with the one specific recommendation he makes in his post: we should withdraw our forces more quickly from Iraq.

However, nearly everything else about his post is misleading. If it were politically possible to make the $100 billion per year in cuts ($1 trillion over ten years), the military budget would still be larger than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even if we were to cut it in half, something that I’ve suggested even though I recognize that it would be politically impossible, that would be the case.

And even if we were to reduce military spending to zero—goose egg, zero, zip, nada—we’d still be running a deficit for the foreseeable future.

Completely eliminating the military budget is obviously out of the question. As important as economizing on the discretionary budget items including defense are we’ve got to look to the non-discretionary portions of the budget, e.g. Social Security and Medicare, for savings if we’re to make any real headway on balancing the budget.

7 comments… add one
  • It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.

    So what? Same thing with Medicare, and nobody is doing much about that. Its just more political posturing from yet another political gas bag.

  • Michael Reynolds Link

    And there’s absolutely no difference between, say, reducing our procurement of air superiority (over whom?) fighters, and telling grandma she can’t have that knee.

  • Drew Link

    “And there’s absolutely no difference between, say, reducing our procurement of air superiority (over whom?) fighters, and telling grandma she can’t have that knee.”

    Dumb.

  • Nice appeal to emotion, but even if we zeroed out defense spending it wouldn’t be enough to deal with Medicare.

  • That’s the key point. I’m completely in favor of trimming the military budget by $1 trillion over the next 10 years, as suggested by Mr. Frank. I’ve suggested trimming the military budget significantly more with a commensurate reduction in the military obligations we’re undertaking. However, I also recognize that it’s completely inadequate to the problem that we face.

  • Michael Reynolds Link

    Steve:

    Yeah. I got that. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve written exactly that on more than one occasion.

    But improvement is improvement, right?

    We have no military competitor at the global level. We need to think about what we’re doing with our military and then configure it appropriately. So good for Rep. Frank for starting the conversation.

  • We have no military competitor at the global level. We need to think about what we’re doing with our military and then configure it appropriately. So good for Rep. Frank for starting the conversation.

    And my point is its the wrong conversation to start, or more accurately not the most important one…because he is a coward. He is an example that the “we just need noble civil servants/politicians” argument is pure Bravo Sierra. In the end, there is no difference.

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