RUTHFULLY YOURS

 DEFENSE SPENDING CUT TO PAY FOR INCREASED ENTITLEMENT SPENDING 

The extraordinary impact of entitlement spending can be seen most clearly when comparing it to perhaps the most basic and essential federal endeavor: national defense.

Chris Conover, has noted that  “[currently] Washington spends $50 billion less on defense than the outgoing secretary of defense said was the bare minimum needed.”

A 2012  U.S. News analysis  emphasized that “government spending on entitlements not only exceeds defense spending these days, it completely overwhelms it. In 2010, America spent well over three times as much on transfer payments to individuals than it did on its entire national security budget-including on both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If current trends continue under President Obama, entitlement spending is set to increase by more than $700 billion over the next four years; the current national cost of all defense and security programs is roughly $700 billion as well. That means it will take only one presidential term … for the growth of entitlement spending to absorb the entire defense budget of the United States.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, because the inflation-adjusted costs of DoD’s plan will rise over time much more rapidly than the budget caps will, the reductions that DoD will have to make relative to its 2013 plan to comply with the caps will be larger in later years (see figure below). From 2018 through 2021, the caps will be about 12 percent below an extrapolation of DoD’s five-year plan and 19 percent below CBO’s projection of the cost of that plan.

The Foreign Policy Initiative notes that under current law, the defense cuts that will automatically take place will be, according to both civilian and military leaders, “devastating and high risk.”

In a CNN interview earlier this year former Secretary Defense Leon Panetta warned of “the most serious readiness crisis” faced by the armed forces in over a decade. And a “serious disruption in defense programs and a sharp decline in military readiness.”

A Manhattan Institute study of federal budget issues found that:

“The fundamental problem in the federal budget is the relentless increase in entitlement spending. … Over the past four decades, the federal government has collected revenue that has averaged 18 percent of GDP annually. In 1972, when total spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid was 4.4 percent of GDP, there was plenty of revenue left over for other priorities of government, like national security. But today, the situation is very different. [a reduction in military spending would make sense could] … only occur if a highly unusual period of tranquility suddenly materialized across the globe. If, on the other hand, the next decade in world history is more like what it has been for millennia, then it would be both financially foolish and utterly irresponsible to claim credit for a fictitious “peace dividend” in outyear budget projections. But, of course, that’s exactly what the Obama budget does to make the deficit forecast look better than it really is.”

Unlike cuts to entitlements, cuts to defense have profoundly negative impacts on the economy.  Defense manufacturing produces high paid employment at a time when unemployment is rampant and well-paid jobs are increasingly scarce. According to former Navy Secretary John Lehman, quoted in a Thinkprogress article, “Defense cuts particularly hurt the economy… because defense spending creates more jobs and growth per dollar than entitlements, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. “If your objective was to maximize jobs, you’d cut entitlement five times more than defense.”

Of course, cutting defense has implications far beyond the economy. A Reuters report quotes defense manufacturers calling the cuts “irresponsible” and “dangerous.”

CONCLUSION 

 The extraordinary increase in entitlement spending has not reduced poverty in America.  In fact, by removing dollars from the private sector as well as other federal efforts that are more productive in producing either employment or traditional and vital services, it has set in motion a cycle of ever-increasing need addressed by ever-increasing spending.  This cycle has reached a critical stage where severe harm to the prosperity and safety of the nation can occur.