How Much For Defense?

July 9, 2015

July is a busy time on Capitol Hill as Congress considers the final round of appropriations decisions for the FY 2016 Federal Budget. In twelve major bills, our representatives are debating how to spend $3.8 trillion dollars next year. That’s not a typo – $3,800,000,000,000. Paraphrasing former House Speaker "Tip" O’Neill (and adjusting for inflation), "A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money."

But there are still major battles to be fought this month because the income projected for next year is "only" $3.18 trillion – a deficit of $62 billion. So it seems pretty obvious that we should be spending less, right? Wrong. Neither Congress nor the President wants to slow down the economy’s current growth trajectory (never mind middle class income stagnation), so both are pushing for even more spending. Where they are getting the money is complicated.

The first obstacle to overcome is the "2011 Budget Control Act (BCA)," a bill passed by Congress. As part of a deal to raise the limit on the national debt, Congress mandated cutting spending over 10 years by $1.2 trillion with half of the cuts landing at the Pentagon’s doorstep. It was called "sequestration."

Suffice it to say that ever since, both the White House and Congress have looked for ways to circumvent the limits. Major budget calamities like the emptying of the Highway Trust Fund and the forthcoming 2016 insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund are now accepted as inevitable. Notwithstanding these warning signals, in January, the President submitted to Congress a budget proposal that called for spending $75 billion more than the 2011 spending caps. This is pure politics.

The President knew that Congress would enthusiastically embrace more spending, particularly the President’s proposed $561 billion for defense. That’s $38 billion above the caps set by the 2011 Act. To avoid obviously violating the spending caps, the extra defense money was allocated to the "Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account," which is miraculously "off budget."

OCO is supposed to be an emergency fund to support "unexpected" costs of combat operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and a hundred other small military deployments. Instead, the President is supporting placing core procurement spending in the OCO basket. Congress eventually reshuffled the funds, but basically approved the President’s boost to defense spending.

Not to be outdone by the White House and looking for an additional $92 billion to fund a new generation of nuclear submarines, members of Congress from ship-building states have created the "National Sea-based Deterrence Fund (NSDF)," which, like the OCO, is "off budget." The NSDF is under scrutiny now but is unlikely to disappear completely.

Similar funding gimmicks are in the works to replace our entire nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years at an estimated cost of $1 trillion(!). Since 2011, President Obama has requested a 50 percent increase ($142 billion) in nuclear weapon modernization funding over the BCA limits. Nowhere in the discussion are cuts to the arsenal or elimination of any of the three elements of the "triad" – land-based missiles, submarines and bombers. Instead, new weapons, invariably more complex and expensive ones, will be built.

Obviously we need and value our military power and we honor the great people who serve. But our actual defense spending – including homeland security and the like – is close to $1 trillion a year. This country consistently spends more than the next seven biggest defense budgets (France, Japan, Great Britain, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India) combined, and some of the biggest are our allies.

Like many in our community, I spent a couple hours on July 4 watching the air show of the USAF Thunderbirds. Meeting the crew members and off-duty pilots (now including a smattering of female trailblazers) underscores their status as the best this country has to offer. But two things nagged away at my enjoyment of the show.

First, I thought back to a meeting I attended at NATO Headquarters, where fellow senior officers were discussing the effort to "win the hearts and minds" of the Afghan people. Seated next to me was a renowned four-star Air Force general. When his turn to speak came, he said, "I’m a fighter pilot. We drop bombs, destroy buildings and kill people."

Those same jet fighters we watched on our beautiful Traverse City beach are out there right now in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq doing precisely what the general described. I recalled also another time long ago when F-4 Phantoms were dropping napalm in support of my unit in Vietnam – just destroying buildings and killing people, like the general so aptly put it.

As two Thunderbird jets screamed low over the crowd on July 4 and we instinctively ducked our heads (as if that would matter), I thought of the people today who are watching not a glamorous and exciting air show, but the destruction of their homes, their villages and even the lives of their loved ones. This is what our defense spending is buying.

Are we really safer? Are we "winning their hearts and minds" or creating new enemies with every bombing run in all those far-off villages? I think it’s legitimate to ask whether the $715 billion we spent in Afghanistan, the $819 billion spent in Iraq and the $6 billion spent so far against ISIS is making us more secure. I’m yearning to hear a candidate for high office ask whether all those billions might not better be spent on building those downtrodden societies, rather than further destroying them, or meeting our urgent priorities here at home.

Jack Segal is a retired senior US diplomat who served at the National Security Council, the State Department and NATO. He is an Adjunct Professor at NMC and he and his wife, Karen, co-chair NMC’s International Affairs Forum.