Slash Military Spending: “Defense” Budgets are Bigger than Ever Before

By Ryan McMaken – Miawa Wire

Unfortunately, there will be no meaningful progress made on bringing the federal government’s runaway spending under control without substantial cuts to military spending. Much of the “discretionary” spending that can be cut in the appropriations process is found in the military and defense budgets. Elderly voters, of course, will throw a fit if anyone mentions cutting their favorite welfare programs, Social Security and Medicare. Moreover, that spending is “non-discretionary” meaning Congress must pass new laws changing spending formulas on top of the appropriations process. That should all be done, of course, but it also means we might as well start with cuts to defense spending.

There is plenty of fat to trim. American taxpayers still spend generously to maintain more than 165,000 US troops overseas, many in countries that are wealthy allies who can easily afford their own military defense.

If so-called fiscal hawks were serious about cutting federal spending, they’d be advocating for hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to the military and defense budgets. At the very least, spending must be returned to its old Cold War peak with a cut of more than $470 billion right off the top. Most of that should come out of the Pentagon budget since cuts to the VA would rightly be portrayed as a ghoulish attempt by Pentagon brass to preserve their own salaries and toys at the expense of ordinary veterans.

Even these “huge” cuts wouldn’t abolish even half of the $2-trillion-plus deficits that the US will be facing each year in coming years.