Sestak, Korb Support Gates/Obama Defense Reforms
One big political problem with the Gates/Obama reform defense budget is that it cuts a lot of programs near and dear to the hearts of the military-industrial complex and their tame dogs in congress. Thus a lot of talk about how Gates is “gutting” the military. But another problem is that Gates actually isn’t cutting spending so his reforms don’t open up a bonanza of new money for tax cuts or social spending that libertarians or liberals get all that excited about.
That said, Brian Beutler notes that retired Admiral Joe Sestak, now a member of congress, is ready to champion the Gates reforms. And Larry Korb, who’s been waging the battle against bloated defense spending since the end of the Cold War, observes that this budget really is a key step in the right direction.
I would urge progressives who are having trouble getting themselves excited about this fight to recognize two points. One is that it really is nice to reorient a given quantity of military spending in more useful directions even if it doesn’t lead to cuts in the headline number. But the other is that if you ever do want to see further-reaching reform, we need to pass something like this budget first. It’s a key political test of whether it’s even possible to defy what the defense contractors and the joint chiefs want. If that does prove possible, then in years to come many things are possible, including a long-term trajectory that has defense declining as a percent of GDP. If it’s not possible then nothing is possible, and no future president will tackle it.
18 Responses to “Sestak, Korb Support Gates/Obama Defense Reforms”
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April 10th, 2009 at 9:40 am
To guess if Gates’ plan will stick, I direct you to Mark Reisner’s “Cadillac Desert”. In there he has a chapter on how Jimmy Carter tried to cut a bunch of wasteful Western water projects in order to balance the budget (by this point in the book its pretty obvious what ridiculous boondoggles these projects are). Carter drew up a “hit list” of most wasteful projects to be cut. It all made logical sense, these projects are expensive and don’t add value, plus we need to balance the budget (remember those days!). To make a long story short, the congressmen whose districts were on that hit list waged an all out war, and the budget ended up with MORE water projects than before. Enter Reagan, a Westerrn governor who would seem to be pro water-project boondoggle. By instituting an under-the-radar requirement that these projects meet a certain accounting threshold in order to be implemented, the number of projects declined.
Moral of the story: Don’t ever underestimate a group of congressmen looking out for their own self-interest.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:47 am
So if you can’t reorient defense spending without first building a broad coalition of people to your cause, then you can’t do it at all? If this fails that shows that if you really want to cut defense spending you need to offer people either tax cuts or popular social spending or both so that you have a broad coalition. The way this could work is that periodically we would slash the defense budget to make room for other things and then when we decided that the military had been slashed to much we would increase spending on things we actually needed. Certainly if Obama doesn’t succeed that doesn’t mean that we are no longer a democracy and that we should all bow down to defense contractors.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:04 am
рекомендую…
One big political problem with the Gates/Obama reform defense budget is that it cuts a lot of programs near and[...]…
April 10th, 2009 at 10:10 am
One thing I have been noticing the past couple of days as this debate winds forward is that there are there are some structural political challenges to having a rational public discussion of defense policy in a democracy. Since our deliberations do take place in public, there are diplomatic considerations that tend to push certain parts of the discussion in the direction of euphemism, abstraction and vagueness.
Much of the debate right now seems to consist in questions about the right balance between tools aimed at rogue and failed states, counterinsurgency, non-state actors, etc., on the one hand, and tools aimed at more conventional capabilities and superiority vs. larger states and potential great power adversaries.
Members of Congress and pundits have no problem going on television and the radio and running on about Al Qaeda, Afghanistan and terrorism. But it is very hard to talk loudly and publicly about long-term defensive needs with respect to China or Russia without being provocative and needlessly damaging our relationships with those countries. In some sense, we want people in the defense establishment to be thinking about all of the possible security contingencies, and to be making sensible requests for resources based on a balanced assessment of those contingencies, without having to make a lot of public noise about each type of planning. But then how do we get informed democratic participation in the debate?
April 10th, 2009 at 10:18 am
It may also be easier to make defense budget cuts in two steps.
1. Redistribute spending so that the military is more capable, while at the same time reducing the political boondoggles.
2. Reduce total spending.
This way, you fight two easier battles rather than one tough one. First, you fight those members just trying to get bucks for their district. Then later you fight those who want unnecessarily high defense spending in general.
So, this year, kill big ticket boondoggles, but increase manpower. After the conflicts wind down, over years, reduce manpower through normal attrition, even below current levels.
Eventually, there could be another BRAC.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:32 am
dude, fix your picture. keeping a pic like that up is like walking around with your fly open
April 10th, 2009 at 10:51 am
This is all such bs as usual from SuckItUp MattY.
Name please one ever Pentagon budget that did not redirect spending in one way or another.
And then while sputtering “Well well well…” name one Pentagon budget that didn’t leave some contractors unhappy and others very happy.
And then let us recall that not only is this an increase in defense spending but that the ObaFraud waived his “toughest ever” restrictions on lobbyists in guv’ment to put industry whores in place under Gates.
So not only is the defense budget reform glass not half full as Matt the Ho wants us to believe but this is actually a step back from defense budget reform.
Unless you think reform is just spending yet mo money on the ObaCrook’s favorite programs and contractors.
Obama is an even bigger prevaricator than Bushit. “No I didn’t bow!” replaces “I didn’t inhale” and “I am not a crook” as most absurd lie.
But hey who you gonna believe, Barry or your own lying eyes?
April 10th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Out of curiosity, were you a PUMA, JT?
April 10th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Who is Congress going to call to argue against the Gates/Obama budget?
He has the JCS and field commanders on his side, so they must have to go to industry reps to find support.
I think it will, at least, be a great way for everyone to recognize that government spending creates jobs, regardless of the social value of the end product.
It is sometimes noted that WWII ended the Great Depression. And it would have ended it even if all the military equipment produced was intentionally destroyed, and never used. So why not build roads, build high-tech cars or whatever to keep these contractors employed.
April 10th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
“even if all the military equipment produced was intentionally destroyed, and never used.”
Actually, a lot of our leftover military equipment was intentionally destroyed after the war. The thinking was that if we released too many jeeps into the market, nobody would buy new cars. As you can imagine, GM thought that was a great idea.
April 10th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Liberals should love the F-22. As it stands now, it’s mostly a defensive weapon that can’t be used to impose the U.S. government’s will in foreign adventures. Meanwhile, Gates is talking about reorienting our giant defense budget so that it’s more capable for the mission of occupation. I mean, what do you think all this talk about more ISR gear is about? It’s for use flying over the heads of our browner-skilled brothers watching them, waiting for the chance to bomb them if we feel we need to explode them.
April 10th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
We’ve conducted two invasions in 8 years. Clearly $600+ billion a year is enough resources to engage in ongoing, large-scale actions abroad. Liberal leaders are just as willing to run around shooting up other countries as wingnut leaders. Just have to have a different reason to send the troops in.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
It’s the empire, stupid.
“A smarter, deadlier, more efficient military” is not a rallying cry for either seriously reduced defense spending, or a serious change in the goals and objectives of what remains an imperial foreign policy.
The work is to force Congress and the Administration to confront the question of our goals, and the purpose of military forces deployed to 130 countries.
If the questions are:
1. How do we more effectively capture and kill all those awful terrorists who want to blow us up?
2. Or how do we spend our money most effectively to keep the evil russkies and Chinese from taking over the world?
Nothing will ever change, except for winning some arguments over buying more, better weapons and equipment and paying soldiers better. If you’re going to run an empire, these are good things, but they aren’t substantive change.
The real questions are:
1. who cares about middle east oil? why do we have to pay for the military to control it for the oil companies?
2. When are we going to force Israel to cut a viable deal with the Palestinians? Heck, I’d settle for conditioning military assistance for withdrawal of all settlements.
3. Why do we spend AS MUCH ON OUR MILITARY AS THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED SPENDS ON THEIRS? Are we getting ready to go to war with the whole world?
4. Why don’t we cut our military expenditures to twice as much as the next highest country?
Sure, sure, these are all “politically non-viable” like single payer health care. But let’s think a little critically here. The Obama military budget is not even a start on anything resembling progressive change, or even a debate about it. Repeat after me: it raises military spending. So we’re not even arguing about incremental “cuts,” just about spending an idiotic amount of resources more efficiently.
Sadly, there may not be any real change until we get our asses kicked in another war. But hey, given the recent record of empires in Afghanistan (ofer the last 500 years), maybe there’s another game-changing debate moment coming sooner than we think.
But maybe I’m wrong about that too. After all, the outcome of the most unpopular, stupid, failed war in the country’s history, a war now universally recognized as having been built on a foundation of lies, resulting in thousands of US deaths and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, is a massive increase in military spending.
How come everything that happens in the world has the same answer in the military budget debate?
April 11th, 2009 at 12:27 am
@17: “politically non-viable.”
Perhaps, but if people like you continue to put forward sharp and reasoned arguments, the pendulum may begin to swing your way.
It is all coming down to winning the battle of ideas. It is a cliche, “change takes time,” but it is valid truth. So we must slowly but steadily begin the process of illumination.