Ever since I read that Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ), prospective GOP Nominee for President, had, according to various media,
… urged Congress on Monday to abandon its budget caps and boost defense spending.
Christie criticized spending limits required by the 2011 Budget Control Act, which Congress passed to bring federal spending under control and end a political standoff over raising the government debt limit.
His remarks on the budget caps are at odds with the views of many fiscally conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill who say the automatic constraints enacted four years ago have helped reduce the country’s budget deficit.
I’ve been mumbling to myself about the outsized budget we customarily accord the Defense Department. Of course, many in the country believe we spend far too much on defense, but it’s also true that many believe we spend too little.
Perhaps the problem is communications? The progressives, such as at The Daily Kos, seem to rely on a sort of hyper-sarcasm as they present facts (sometimes out of context). The more intellectual campaigners, such as the folks at National Priorities, like to present facts, figures, and graphs, such as this one for the 2015 defense budget:
While the folks at Task & Purpose contend it’s closer to One Trillion Dollars (just to up my popped-eye quotient):
The United States spends a lot of money on defense. This is not an astounding fact. Just last month the president of the United States signed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2015, giving the Department of Defense a base budget of $496 billion, plus $64 billion for what is referred to as Overseas Contingency Operations spending. This is because despite having a budget of nearly half a trillion dollars, the DoD base budget only covers normal operations and not combat spending. Also in the NDAA is $17.9 billion for the Department of Energy to spend on our nuclear weapons programs. If you didn’t know, our nuclear weapons, though deployed on Navy submarines and housed in Air Force silos, are actually paid for by the Energy department.
When you add all of the numbers up, the United States is on the verge of spending $1 trillion on defense for one fiscal year, nearly double what is authorized in the baseline DoD budget. This diffusion of the defense budget has led to a slow decrease in the percentage of money scrutinized by public eyes or open to public debate. This movement could also be seen as symptomatic of a nation so willing to deficit spend. The Department of Veterans Affairs is the largest expenditure outside of the DoD, and in many ways, covers the interest payments for the human costs of war.
Back at National Priorities prefers pie graphs to words, though:
So is the problem that we do not give enough information? How about we do not compare ourselves enough to the world? Here’s a pie chart for the UK:
Defense is 6%. China:
Not quite 50%; however, the page states that “social spending” is pushed down to local governments and is much higher than one might think – and thus bias the pie chart.
Russia? No luck finding one.
Certainly, the effect of war on the economy should concern everyone, and has been a topic of investigation by costsofwar.org:
What effect has war spending had on the U.S. economy? What would the U.S. economy have looked like without war spending? War spending has probably stimulated the national economy to a degree. But the extra income attributable to war spending has been partially offset by the negative macroeconomic consequences of increased deficits and debt used to finance the wars. The net effect on GDP has probably been positive but is small and declining. An important impact of war spending has been to raise the nation’s indebtedness.
The increased military spending following 9/11 was financed almost entirely by borrowing. According to standard macroeconomic models and evidence, rising deficits have resulted in higher debt, a higher debt to GDP ratio because debt has risen faster than income, and higher interest rates.
Washington’s Blog notes:
How could war actually hurt the economy, when so many say that it stimulates the economy?
Because of what economists call the “broken window fallacy”.
Specifically, if a window in a store is broken, it means that the window-maker gets paid to make a new window, and he, in turn, has money to pay others. However, economists long ago showed that – if the window hadn’t been broken – the shop-owner would have spent that money on other things, such as food, clothing, health care, consumer electronics or recreation, which would have helped the economy as much or more. If the shop-owner hadn’t had to replace his window, he might have taken his family out to dinner, which would have circulated more money to the restaurant, and from there to other sectors of the economy. Similarly, the money spent on the war effort is money that cannot be spent on other sectors of the economy.
We have no enemies that can destroy us, or even seriously harm us. So what will it take to make defunding the military to more sensible levels a fine Congressional sport? We can point at defense contractors, our military past, etc etc – but what sort of communications is necessary for citizens who think we’re underfunding the military to realize this view may be specious and should be rethought?
