Opinion: America's Unquenchable Defense Spending

(July 20) -- If there's one issue that seems to unite an increasingly divided and fractured capital, it is the ever-expanding federal budget deficit. Everyone seems wants to curb Washington's appetite for spending.

Except one area of the federal budget is seemingly off limits: the $692 billion elephant in the room -- America's defense budget.

The calls from Republicans and Democrats for belt-tightening rarely, if ever, seem to extend to the military. Deficit hawks in the House have even demanded that an amendment to the $37 billion Afghanistan spending bill that would allocate $10 billion to prevent teacher layoffs next school year be paid for with offsetting spending cuts. No such demands have been made about war spending, which since 9/11 tops more than $1 trillion. When it comes to paying for America's wars, Washington's attitude has seemingly been, "Put it on the credit card ... preferably the Chinese one."

Yet, outside the nation's entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the defense budget is by far the biggest chunk of the nation's fiscal pie. Aside from money allocated for the Pentagon there is another more than $300 billion in additional outlays for costs like homeland security, military aid, veteran's benefits and military-related interest on the national debt. That's more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money -- or about $3 out of every $10 in tax revenue.

And while the defense budget has been growing for decades, since 9/11 the numbers have jumped significantly. In fact, 65 percent of the increase in discretionary spending has gone to the Department of Defense in the years since 2001. And the money is not just going to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nonwar defense spending makes up more than a third of the increase.

All of this is happening at a time when the U.S. faces no major foreign rival and al-Qaida, according to the nation's intelligence chiefs, has been reduced to a mere 400 to 500 key operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan alone, the U.S. is spending $100 billion and deploying 100,000 troops to face an enemy that has only about 50 to 100 operatives in the entire country.

Trimming the defense budget will not solve the country's deficit woes, but it would certainly help. Moreover, smart spending cuts would allow lawmakers to divert money toward creating jobs and growing the economy -- steps that would, over time, do far more to reduce the deficit.

A recent report by the Sustainable Defense Task Force provides a useful guide going forward. Tasked by Rep. Barney Frank to identify areas of the defense budget that could be cut without compromising U.S. vital interests, the task force found nearly $1 trillion in possible savings over 10 years.

This included reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal; decreases in the 1.5 million-person uniformed armed forces, with a particular focus on reducing the U.S. military footprint in Europe and Asia; cuts in "costly and unworkable" weapons systems like the F-35 combat aircraft and the MV-22 Osprey; and overall savings in "command, support and infrastructure funding."

Some of the steps reflect commonsense ways to safeguard budgetary dollars. For example, the Pentagon can't pass the test of an independent auditor, which means it can't say where its money goes. In any other government agency this would be considered scandalous; at the Pentagon it is standard operating procedure.

To be sure, these moves will upset not just the military, but members of Congress and affected communities. But if Congress is willing to consider cuts to Social Security and Medicare, or won't even fund money for teachers and benefits for the unemployed out of deficit fears, why should the defense budget be off the table?

Of course, as the report also suggests, the surest way to truly reduce U.S. military spending would be to adopt a policy of greater "restraint" that makes the deployment of U.S. forces a true last resort, minimizes overseas commitments and stops subsidizing the defense responsibilities of our allies in Europe and Asia.

Unfortunately, the country may not be ready for such changes. But in the meantime there are plenty of smart measures that can wring savings out of our bloated defense budget. The bottom line is that if policymakers are serious about tackling the deficit, they need to adopt the old adage of Willie Sutton: Look where the money is. Now that they have a road map for cutting defense dollars, they should follow it.