Yes, you read that right. Middle of the road just the facts, ma’am, Politico actually ran two articles, one “liberal” and one “conservative”, calling for Congress to stop spending so gosh darn much on defense. Both pieces are waaay too timid by my standards, but to hear two voices speak up in what has been decades of deafening silence on the issue in the “mainstream” press is still a delight.
“Defund the Pentagon: The Liberal Case”, is authored by everyone’s favorite Larry David impersonator, Sen. Bernie Sanders, while “Defund the Pentagon: The Conservative Case” is written by Andrew Lautz and Jonathan Bydlak. Andy is with the National Taxpayers Union, while Jonathan is director of the R Street Institute’s Fiscal and Budget Policy Project.
Sanders proposes cutting the defense budget by 10%. Since the defense budget in 2016 under President Obama stood at about $600 billion, and was grossly inflated even then, the current Trump budget of around $740 billion should be targeted for an ultimate reduction of 35-45%. Lautz and Bydlak don’t descend into particulars, but do provide lots of links to more detailed proposals. I’ve always felt that trying to cut the defense budget was essentially impossible as long as there was enough money to cover “everything”. Thanks to the coronavirus, that no longer seems to be the case.
My most recent, and most extensive, effusion on defense spending, “Old Man War Machine, he jes’ keep rollin’ along” argues that even during the Cold War the defense budget was massively bloated—both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were captive to the notion that “the more rockets we have, the safer we are”, despite the fact that, after the first few hundred missiles, the rest is overkill. The cost of nuclear war is so grotesquely high—and the thought that a major military clash between super powers would not swiftly lead to an all-out nuclear exchange so preposterous—that there is simply no need for anything more than a submarine-based deterrent. The beloved “triad” was and is simply a high-tech pork-barrel.
