Defense Spending Going Up, Up and Away
The Bush administration’s Fiscal Year 2009 budget for the Department of Defense came in at $513 billion. That does not include the ongoing costs of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s by far the largest number in the world. And it represents a huge increase in the baseline budget from where it was in FY2001. And, to repeat, that’s not because the budget has gone up because of the wars. Well, the Office of Management and Budget was preparing to tell the Pentagon to spend $527 billion—a $14 billion increase—in FY2010. But the Pentagon wanted to spend $584 billion. So they had this effort underway to protray Obama’s $14 billion hike as a $57 billion cut. And now Spencer Ackerman tells me that the administration is starting to cave and promising a $537 total budget.
I expect conservatives concerned about overspending and especially deficit-averse Blue Dogs to be leading the charge against these kind of wasteful outlays.*
* I do not, in fact, expect any such thing—those guys are huge hypocrites.
59 Responses to “Defense Spending Going Up, Up and Away”
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February 18th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
“Well, the Office of Management and Budget was preparing to tell the Pentagon to spend $527 billion—a $14 billion increase—in FY2010. But the Pentagon wanted to spend $584 billion. So they had this effort underway to protray Obama’s $14 billion hike as a $57 billion cut.”
That’s the same rhetorical stunt the Dems used when Newt Gingrich wanted to slow the increase in Medicare spending. In fact, I bet you’ve used it yourself on occasion. So why the whining about it here?
February 18th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Look, you don’t want to be killed by Arab Soviet terrorists while radical, Maoist Chinese homosexuals rape your wife, do you?
Just give the Pentagon the money and no one gets hurt.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I knew that’s immediately how you guys would respond. And justifiably too, since just like Medicare, the Pentagon’s budget goes to per-person outlays.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Meet the new boss.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Fucking hell.
And: what John Emerson said.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Don’t you guys know? Money spent on defense isn’t real money! It’s, like, Monopoly money for government. Or something.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
So the Obama Administration makes a bad decision to increase defense spending and the blame is to be laid on everybody but the President? I might have thought that the proper response to the President making a bad call might be to … oh, I don’t know … criticize Obama. Matt’s post here is a little to close for comfort to all those right-wing posts during the Bush Presidency explaining how, yes, Bush might have made some mistakes; but if so, any of his mistakes were still always the fault of those darn liberals.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
You could well argue the reverse Matt. Won’t these amazing amounts of money do wonders for the economy? If we can give away condoms, and pay states to retain social workers and bureaucrats, why can’t we stimulate the defense industry? Personally, I’d love to see the defense budget halved, but give me a break. You’re willing to spend money on just about anything else under the sun.
@El Cid: What does per person outlays have to do with anything? Fred is right. The Pentagon is employing a time honored tactic to confuse the issue, like Democrats have been doing forever. That and calling any modest reduction in the growth of funding “slashing funding”. You guys have no grounds to complain at all.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I have a question about this that I hope a commenter will answer. There’s the defense budget, then there are separate expenditures for Iraq and Afganistan. Now let’s say a vehicle is blown up or just wears out in Iraq. A new vehicle is requisitioned to replace it. Is that cost in the Pentagon budget, or it is accounted for separately? The reason I ask is that if it is the former, then at least part of the Pentagon budget is paying for Iraq and Afganistan. I’m talking about capital goods here–not expenditures like ammunition and salaries. (Although that is a good question too–do the salaries of soldiers serving in war zones show up in the Pentagon budget, or is that also a special separate expenditure.)
February 18th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
What on Earth do you mean what does it have to do with anything? Are you kidding me?
February 18th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Counterfactual, no one blamed the hike on conservatives. Matt snarked that he expects them to love this spending hike, and that they’re hypocrites, both things that happen to be true.
But, as the post notes, the administration is the one caving, and they are in fact the ones to blame.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Obama should take them at their word and give them exactly a 57 billion/year cut.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
I have a great way to start saving on the defense budget. Shitcan those gold-plated Halliburton/KBR/etc. contracts and put the soldiers back on KP. Won’t hurt ‘em – they’ll have less time to stack prisoners in human pyramids, too.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
12: That would be awesome. Oh for the time when a president could say to the nation, “this is not a time for wasteful defense spending” and be taken seriously!
February 18th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I understand from my brother-in-law who works on Pentagon related stuff for the GAO that the Pentagon rounds off its accounting to the nearest million dollars. Perhaps better accounting standards could get rid of some waste, fraud and abuse??
February 18th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Not that I enjoy out of control spending, but can’t this be also part of the economic stimulus package?
Let’s be honest with ourselves, we *have* a industrial military complex and right now it seems that it’s better to keep the people working in this industrial military complex *working*
No one will hop onto a plan to move billions from military spending to NASA and science. So we need to keep our engineers and manufacturers employed making war toys.
Then we can sell it to the Gulf Nations and get some of our money we spend on forign oil back.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
You could well argue the reverse Matt. Won’t these amazing amounts of money do wonders for the economy?
When monetary policy fails to prevent a depression, it’s stimulative to pay people to dig holes and fill them back up. Heck, it’s even stimulative to pay them to dig holes in traffic, have people fall in and break their legs, and pay the medical bills.
Defense spending is using federal money to blow things up. It’s the “pay people to dig holes so other people can break their legs in them” kind of stimulus spending. It’s BAD spending. It would be far better over the long run to pay our soldiers to play pinochle because, see, that’s a waste of time but nothing gets blown up, so it’s not a destructive waste of time.
Listen, armies are a smart economic investment in one case only: if you’re afraid you’re going to get invaded. It turns out that it’s better to blow someone else up than to let them blow you up.
Eisenhower was right. Our massive investment in these systems is destructive. Deficit spending on defense should be a LAST resort, and if you call yourself a fiscal conservative, you should demand a much, much higher standard of “do we really need this or is it wasteful” than you do for any kind of investment in stuff that does not blow up. Contraception money, health care money, money to count mice in fields should all be presumed to be smarter spending than defense spending unless proved otherwise.
Jesus, have these blue dogs not looked at the history of Rome, Persia, England, Germany? They were brought down by stupidly investing in the military–an investment that always has negative return!
February 18th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
According to GlobalSecurity.org, not only is the U.S. military budget the largest in the world, it beats the combined military budgets of all other nations. Without counting Iraq and Afghanistan.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Fred is wrong:
Social Security had built-in increases due to COLAs and an increase in the number of people getting benefits. These increases were legislated long ago. If spending is reduced below the level previously legislated, that is a cut even if more money is spent from one year to the next.
If the proposed increases in defense were simply COLA adjustments to soldiers’ pay, Fred would have a point. But of course, that is not the case. There is an enormous amount of discretionary spending not previously legislated in that bill. Reducing that bill’s spending from the proposed level to a level still more than the previous bill is an increase, not a cut.
Words have meanings – all of them, not just the ones we like.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Lockheed is now arguing that purchasing more F22s is really just “shovel ready stimulus”
February 18th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Can we have something on what the money is being spent on? Big difference between doubling the F22 procurement and better medical care for wounded troops or payraises to retain enlisted men.
And of course eliminating a lot of the outsourcing would be worth some funding.
February 18th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Obama campaigned on increasing the size of the military. You voted for him. Quit yer bitchin’.
February 18th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
England is probably still ahead with regard to its military investments. They probably should have “sold” sooner than they did, but they made enormous profits.
The US has also made huge profits from investing in its military. Taking land from the Indians and Mexico was quite profitable. Right up through WWII it was probably a sound investment, though that California aquisition might be about to go bust. I don’t see a lot more room for making of profits, though. We probably should diversify significantly. Maintaining more than a 50% market-share seems unwise. Simply having the biggest market share by a wide margin should suffice.
The Persians were done in mostly by overtaxation and underspending. That was an empire in dire need of Keynesians.
I’d say that the Romans were done in by a really bad immigration policy.
The best example of overspending on the military was the Soviet Union. Spending 30% of GDP over a few decades is quite nuts.
February 18th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
For those arguing that this can be construed as stimulus money: It could, but overall it would be better to build something with social benefit. If we build a F-22, sure some people are employed, but not that many, and the F-22 just gets blown up or rusts off somewhere.
If we use that $183m to build a couple new bridges, or a rail station, then presumably people will be more productive or enjoy a higher quality of life. I’d argue this is better than padding a defense contractor’s bottom line somewhere (because let’s face it, defense contractor’s aren’t the most efficient spenders of the free money they get from the government).
February 18th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
“Obama campaigned on increasing the size of the military. You voted for him. Quit yer bitchin’.”
There’s difference between increasing the size of the military and increasing the size of the military’s budget. Get rid of some of those really expensive toys and pay soldiers more.
February 18th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
There’s difference between increasing the size of the military and increasing the size of the military’s budget.
Obama pledged to increase the size of the military. He said nothing about maintaining the current budget. If you seriously thought that that’s what he meant, you’re a fool.
February 18th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
And now Spencer Ackerman tells me that the administration is starting to cave and promising a $537 total budget.
$537? Cool! It’s great to see this Administration finally cave to the lefties. Now they’ll really have to hold bake sales to buy a bomber!
February 18th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
If Matt ever read or responded to anything in comments, I’d address this to him, but since that’s low-percentage, can anyone answer this question:
Is the Obama administration ending the Bush practice of keeping the Iraq and Afghanistan war/occupations out of the defense budget, and funding them through “emergency supplementals”? Or do we not know yet because the budget hasn’t been officially presented? Or…?
Please respond if you know, or point me to a source where I could find out.
February 18th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
“Obama campaigned on increasing the size of the military. You voted for him. Quit yer bitchin’.”
Exactly.
Or as I repeatedly said during the campaign and after:
Suckers.
February 18th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
February 18th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I agree that we spend too much on defense, but given the economic circumstances wouldn’t this be a good time to do defense spending so that we can spend less in the future. There is lots of defense equipment that we will eventually need and this seems like a good time to buy it. (Full disclosure I work as an Engineer at a small business that does defense related R&D)
February 18th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
I agree that we spend too much on defense, … Full disclosure I work as an Engineer at a small business that does defense related R&D
To help reduce that “too much,” I vote that we eliminate whatever part of the defense budget pays your salary.
February 18th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
“To help reduce that “too much,” I vote that we eliminate whatever part of the defense budget pays your salary.”
Would your spite provide more economic stimulus than that part of his salary?
February 18th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
As long as most of it is going internally to the Corps of Engineers fixing up the broken levees and building wind turbines, I’m okay with it. We don’t need to maintain an empire any more; other nations will love us if we can only keep electing Democrats.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
What’s with the illustration? It looks as if the CSS Virginia has now acquired rockets with which to attack the Monitor.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
“Obama pledged to increase the size of the military. He said nothing about maintaining the current budget. If you seriously thought that that’s what he meant, you’re a fool.”
I’m not a fool, I know exactly what he said. But because we voted for him, you’re of the opinion that we should all just sit down and shut up. That is among the dumbest opinions one can make. Why should I just accept whatever he does and cheer him on? He isn’t Bush and I’m not you. If he doesn’t do something I like, I’ll bitch about it to my heart’s content and bring all the pressure I can to make him change to what I want him to do.
So your ‘quit your bitchin” line is way out of line.
Not to mention, why shouldn’t I think that when he means to increase the size of the military he doesn’t have to increase the budget for it to whatever the Pentagon wants. What they asked for is costs to maintain what they’ve got, pay the soldiers and buy new (and not necessarily useful) toys. I’m cool with the first two, but with new toys I’m not.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:31 am
But because we voted for him, you’re of the opinion that we should all just sit down and shut up.
I’m saying that since Obama CAMPAIGNED on increasing the size of the military, and since increasing the size of the military is very likely to increase the size of the military budget, you’re just getting what you voted for. If you don’t like it, tough shit. You should have thought of that before the election.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:39 am
Oh. That’s what democracy is all about. Once you cast your vote—tough shit.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:04 am
“Oh. That’s what democracy is all about. Once you cast your vote—tough shit.”
In a representative democracy, that about describes it.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:34 am
Is the Obama administration ending the Bush practice of keeping the Iraq and Afghanistan war/occupations out of the defense budget, and funding them through “emergency supplementals”?
yes, at least that’s the plan that Mullen had when the budget numbers got bumped up and MattY started calling an ‘ambush’.
From the CQ article he cited frequently at the time:
Based on the both that story and what I’ve seen in the press on the current proposals, the $527B figure doesn’t account for all of afghanistan and iraq but starts to.
To roughly answer a similar question above, but I am by no means an expert so a lot of this is second hand and may be wrong:
The expenditures in afghanistan and iraq pay for ‘operational expenses’ Most easily separated are consumables like food, gasoline, and even salaries for local civilian employees – and of course all the contractors (which are generally not direct payments to individuals but to whatever company is contracted for the service). The fuzzier aspects are repair parts and what as you call ‘capital expenditures’. It really depends on the specific system. In the navy, at least, if there was a repair that the sailors were expected or required to make in the theater of operations, that would likely be paid for by the supplemental. However if the repair was deferred until the unit got back to the mainland base, (and/or done by a higher level repair facility) that would be paid for by the general navy repair budget. So I’m guessing that complete replacement of a tank would be paid out of the main budget, but replacing only the treads in Iraq would be the supplemental.
Lastly this:
” So they had this effort underway to protray Obama’s $14 billion hike as a $57 billion cut.”
Who’s they? The Pentagon? Obama kept on Gates. Obama hired his deputy who is a card carrying member of the military industrial complex. From one point of view, like others have said, what did you expect? From another point of view, it’s nonetheless Obama’s Pentagon now. Or are you going to be like the conservatives who blamed everything on ‘career democrats’ at State and Justice?
February 19th, 2009 at 4:11 am
Except it’s not entirely true. Politicians all the time alter their positions after pressure from one side or the other. Look at the Administration’s attitude towards nationaliz-oops, I mean receivership. They weren’t, and now they’re leaving it open.
Our resident genius carsond seems to think that the only issue that mattered to any of us in the last election was the military, and evidently by not voting for that notorious military shrinker McCain, we’ve voted for a larger military and we should just shut up and take it. Fuck that. That’s defeatist talk, or the talk of somebody who wants to shut down people that disagree with him.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:38 am
It actually makes sense to build more F-22s. The US does need more fighters sooner or later to replace existing ones. Building more F-22s now is far cheaper than having to design and produce an new fighter further down the track.
February 19th, 2009 at 6:09 am
But we don’t need any more F-22s at the moment. If we build them now, and a conflict comes 20 years down the road, we’ll have 20 yr-old fighters. If we wait to build them, materials will become cheaper, avionics and electronics could be upgraded and there wouldn’t be as much wear and tear on the machines. We’d have essentially newer fighters.
Assuming the fighters don’t get used, we’d have to design and produce a new fighter down the track (because as everyone knows, we have to maintain superiority), so we’d have blown the money on this current run, plus the future fighter.
February 19th, 2009 at 6:11 am
And if you think they’d work as a stimulus, the counter argument is that we should use that money for infrastructure that will enhance quality of life and productivity.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:17 am
My mistake. Please insert “Medicare” where I put “Social Security”. It will be almost completely accurate. Medicare costs were not based on COLAs, but the effect is the same.
Per patient cost estimates rose from $4800 in 1995 to $8000 in 2003. To maintain the same medicare program, spending would need to be $8000/senior. Gingrich proposed $6700/senior. Indeed, GOP congressmen referred to declining care years afterwards due to cuts in medicare, because benefits were, indeed, cut.
Honest people can comprehend the idea that benefits were cut while total spending was increased. That was actually the argument the Clinton administration was making. The GOP successfully eliminated the benefit cuts from media coverage. The story was oversimplified to “Clinton claims more spending is a cut”.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:24 am
“My mistake. Please insert “Medicare” where I put “Social Security”. It will be almost completely accurate. Medicare costs were not based on COLAs”
Apples and oranges, Njorl. COLAs have nothing to do with Medicare, and the growth in Medicare spending can be slowed without limiting benefits (by, for example, slowing the increase in Medicare’s reimbursements for various procedures). The salient point is that back then, Democrats called a smaller increase in overall Medicare spending than they wanted a “cut”, when it fact it was actually an increase. That’s the same rhetorical stunt Matt is complaining about here, in the context of Defense spending.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:09 am
“Oh. That’s what democracy is all about. Once you cast your vote—tough shit.”
This site gets some amazing trolling. The quote above is a thing of beauty!
February 19th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
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