White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You by Simon Johnson & James Kwak

Author:Simon Johnson & James Kwak
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Banks & Banking, Consumer Behavior, Decision-Making & Problem Solving, Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780307907127
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2012-04-03T07:35:50+00:00

NATIONAL DEFENSE

Along with Social Security and health care, the third major component of the federal budget is defense spending. We spend a lot on national defense: $689 billion in 2010, more than in any year since World War II after accounting for inflation; 4.7 percent of GDP, more than in any year since 1992, when the military was shrinking after the Cold War; 20 percent of all federal spending; and 43 percent of all military spending in the world, almost six times that of any other country.59 Even excluding current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, real defense spending is higher than it was during the Cold War, when we had a military superpower as a mortal enemy.60 Nor is it clear that our current defense spending—which pays for over five thousand nuclear warheads and a navy that is larger than the next thirteen combined (eleven of which belong to our allies or partners), among other things—buys us the security we need today.61 Since 2001, our primary enemies have been terrorist groups that someday may gain access to nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps someday, when China has built multiple aircraft carrier groups, we will need the eleven we currently have (no other country has more than one carrier group). But that day is not today.

At a high level, it should be possible to gradually reduce overall defense spending to 1999–2001 levels (3.0 percent of GDP) or lower without significantly increasing our national security risks. As Lawrence Korb, an assistant defense secretary under President Reagan, has pointed out, it was essentially this relatively inexpensive military that rapidly drove both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein from power.62 The budget submitted by President Obama in 2011 already projected that defense spending would fall to around 3 percent of GDP by 2021.63 Analysts from across the political spectrum have also agreed on various specific steps that could be taken to reduce defense spending. For example, the left-leaning Center for American Progress, the bipartisan Sustainable Defense Task Force, and conservative Republican senator Tom Coburn have all endorsed several spending reductions such as decreasing the number of aircraft carrier groups, limiting procurement of the F-35 and V-22, lowering troop levels in Europe and Asia, shrinking the nuclear arsenal, and reforming the Defense Department’s health care system—steps that together would reduce spending by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.64 The decade following the September 11 attacks also saw the expansion of a vast, overlapping, poorly coordinated, and expensive intelligence apparatus, with a total cost exceeding $80 billion each year (most of which is outside the military budget).65 With operations split across more than 1,200 government organizations and 1,900 private contractors, it is likely that eliminating redundant operations could both reduce spending and actually increase our security by improving communication among agencies—although organizational complexity and secrecy present high barriers to greater efficiency.66

We do not count any military or intelligence savings toward our long-term deficit reduction goals because we expect that these or similar

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