The Defense Budget and Politics

Budgets are the quintessence of politics. They are the consequences of elections. They confer the ability to allocate public resources according to the winner’s values. Budget allocations, especially that of the Department of Defense reflect the power balance of domestic politics. The defense budget has, since 1980, answered to the conservative position that would redistribute wealth upward, cut the social infrastructure and attack New Deal reforms.

From the start of the Cold War in 1950 and until 1980, the Department of Defense budget reflected a perceived Soviet threat. To that end, America fought wars in Korea and Vietnam and built a nuclear strike force. The military industrial complex as President Eisenhower feared, took the money and ran.

Economically, defense department spending acted as a sustained and powerful economic stimulus. This was the definition of military Keynesianism and it worked its magic, bolstering the economy through those early years and continuing even to today. But through those years some relationship between spending and war or threats of war remained. Then the spending lost touch with reality.

After1980, the Soviet empire was collapsing from within but that did not fit our shifting domestic political agenda. By 1990, the Soviet boogie man had collapsed and we started talking about a peace dividend. Instead, keeping with the power of the conservative forces, the defense budget rose sharply, completely ignoring the fact that the threat was diminishing. The defense budget became a way to transfer money upward.

Over the more recent years 1980 to 2011, annual defense spending went from $131 billion to $700. America ended up with an empire of 1.5 million military personnel, 6000 domestic bases, 700 bases in 130 countries and 11 carrier task forces projecting American power over the globe. The Department of Defense budget is 4.7% of GDP, 19% of the federal budget and 28% of tax revenue. Our defense budget is larger than the next 17 largest countries combined. In fact, we spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined.

The defense budget knew no controls. Until very recently, “supporting the troops” meant spending what was requested. Cuts in defense spending were off the table. There was the opposite of gridlock, there was collusion by all political interests. The result was that spending grew almost exponentially with little or no regard to the level or nature of the threat being defended against.

Well, If budgets reflect domestic political priorities and the budget bears no resemblance to the size or nature of the threat, then this horrendous, even obscene, annual expenditure can only reflect domestic forces.

A recent book rounded up the usual suspects to blame: the neo-cons who want to spread their brand of capitalism and democracy, George Bush who wanted to be a war President, Zionism (always some one has to blame the Jews) and, the most popular, oil. But none of these are adequate to explain the extent of our empire. Only domestic politics will do that.

Meanwhile, the conservative agenda of trickle down was doing what it was intended to do. Since 1980, income of the 1% increased by 176% and their share of national income rose from 7.5% to 14%. The working class saw little or no income increase and eventually went broke. Having lost all that income, workers could no longer buy what they were producing and we ended up headed for a new depression. In a move to distract the populace from their desperate situation, the politicians turned to a ginned-up “debt -ceiling crisis.”

The impasse and gridlock of the ceiling controversy led Congress to appoint a “Supercommittee,” the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. It Is charged to come up with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts by November 23. Cutting the budget with 9% unemployment is perverse.

The politicians of the right insist that the workers overspent and must be disciplined with austerity. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer but it's the poor who are told they have to tighten their belts. At the time that the economy is slipping over the cusp toward recession because of high unemployment and lack of consumer spending, the politicians want to cut workers wages and benefits. They want to deny the stimulus effect of defense spending at the same time they cut social security, Medicare and Medicaid. This is perverse. It is exactly the wrong thing to do. But it pushes that conservative agenda.

We are now supposed to be in political gridlock. None of the factions in Congress supposedly have the power to control the allocation of wealth. No! The coalition that brought you a fraudulent debt ceiling crisis will ensure that the solution rewards the rich. That’s what the defense budget exists for.