Time to fund national defense
April 24, 2009 | By Nathaniel Ward
Conservatives should have done more to protect long-term defense spending during the recent budget debates, argues Heritage defense policy expert Mackenzie Eaglen.
The current blueprint for the defense budget is targeted at saving money in the short run. But Eaglen warns that inadequate defense budgets could "actually cause the American taxpayer to spend billions more than necessary to sustain a military that is smaller than needed using equipment that is increasingly dated." This is exactly what happened when conservatives acquiesced to President Bill Clinton's defense budget cuts in the 1990s.
Even a modest increase of $27 billion in defense spending would have been "achievable and responsible," she argues. Yet both budget proposals offered by conservatives fell short of even that figure, though they exceeded the President's budget request.
In her in-depth report on defense spending (full report in PDF), Eaglen outlines the 11 fundamental building blocks for national defense. These, not short-term concerns, ought to guide Congress' military spending considerations:
- Strategic defense and deterrence
- Seizing and holding territory against organized ground forces
- Counterinsurgency capabilities
- Growing and modernizing the Reserve component
- Special Operations forces
- Air superiority
- Long-range bombing
- Projecting power through the maritime domain
- Space access and denial
- Deterring, protecting, denying, and attacking in cyberspace
- Global logistics
The Constitution tasks the federal government with providing for the common defense of the nation. The Founders did not qualify this task by limiting it to times of economic prosperity. Unfortunately, as Eaglen notes in her report, "uncertainty about the stability of the economy has prompted some Members of Congress to call for reducing the defense budget."
-Amanda Reinecker
Other Heritage work of note
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- Heritage transportation expert Ron Utt and Rep. Jeff Flake have teamed up to tackle the unfair discrepancies created by a "perverse system of trickle-up economics." Federal transportation money significantly benefits wealthy states, such as New York, at the expense of less affluent "donor states." Utt and Flake call upon donor states, who send more fuel taxes to Washington than they ever receive in transportation funding, to band together and demand "their states' fair share of highway taxes."
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In other news
- The Connecticut legislature approved language granting religious organizations an exemption from state laws prohibiting discrimination against same-sex couples. The state recently legalized same-sex "marriage," a move which could have undermined religious liberty by compelling religious groups that disapprove of such unions to recognize them regardless.
- By considering the removal of Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, the Obama administration hopes to indicate that it's "taking as hard a line with the banks as it did with General Motors." Meanwhile, the Obama administration has announced a proposal to convert its preferred stock in financial firms into common stock, which would give the government substantial direct control over these institutions.
- Unlike many banks that have come to rely on government funds to prop them up, Credit Suisse, Switzerland's banking giant, remains skeptical of excessive state intervention.
- The Congressional Budget Office predicts that Social Security beneficiaries, who enjoyed benefit increases in 2009, will not receive cost-of-living adjustments for 2010 and possibly beyond.
- The Obama administration says it is not opposed to prosecuting Bush administration officials for giving legal advice on anti-terrorism tactics. This would be in effect an attempt by the new administration to prosecute its predecessor for policy disagreements.
- In a review of her first 100 days as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton defends her push for family planning and contraception in international aid efforts, arguing that increased funding for both is the most effective way to reduce the number of abortions.
- A U.S. doctor claims to have successfully implanted eleven cloned human embryos in the wombs of four women. Scientists doubt his claims, while ethicists raised objections as well.
- As rumors of bankruptcy cause sales to decrease, GM considers a temporary nine-week shutdown of its U.S. factories over the summer.
Coming up at Heritage
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- On Monday, April 27 at noon, author John Taylor explains how big government caused the financial crisis and has made it worse.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Amanda Reinecker contributed to this report.
