JONATHAN COHN OCTOBER 22, 2010
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Steve Benen argues:
I continue to believe in a simple litmus test -- if you claim to believe in fiscal responsibility and want to cut the deficit, you can’t insist that the Pentagon budget is untouchable. It’s an immediate credibility killer, reflecting a fundamental lack of seriousness about the subject.
I understand his point, and it’s a good post, but I’m going to disagree with it. Put Peter Orszag, Mitch Daniels, Stan Collender, Keith Hennessey, and Robert Greenstein in a room, tell them each to produce three honest proposals for a balanced budget over 2020-2030 without touching the Pentagon, and hand them a sufficient supply of envelope backs, and in a couple of hours at most you’ll be looking at fifteen balanced budget proposals, ranging from conservative to liberal. Yes, national security is a huge chunk of discretionary spending, but raise taxes, slash Medicare, eliminate federal involvement in education and the environment...there are lots of ways to get there.
No, I understand what Benen is saying, but I’d go in a different direction. If you declare the Pentagon budget off limits but don’t support either higher taxes or draconian cuts in major programs, then you are not serious about national security. The United States is a fabulously wealthy nation; there are very few things that this country cannot afford. But if you’re not willing to pay for it, if you’re saying -- as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney said for eight years, with the approval of almost every Republican in Congress and most conservative pundits -- that taxes should be lower and the other major functions of the government should be preserved -- then whatever you say, it’s just lip service.
And of course that goes double for anyone trying to whip up the country into a frenzy about budget deficits without proposing a real budget that reduces the deficit without touching the Pentagon.
Wanting it, in any serious way, means wanting to pay for it. For once, the household budget analogies do hold here. Claiming to want some level of national defense but that you’re not willing to pay for it is exactly the same as my “wanting” to fly to Philadelphia to attend NLCS Game Six -- if I’m not willing to open my wallet, it’s a nice thought, but it has nothing to do with reality. And on national security, there are a whole lot of people, including some of the most blustery neocons, who are living in Fantasyland.
5 comments
Our descendants will look back at our time and say, "Yes, back then they thought the debt would go away without doing anything, like a cold or the flu. Before that they thought the earth was the center of the universe and before that they debated over whether it was flat. At least one person thought you could see a monkey turn into a person. Oh, and there was a great big country called the United States.
- Nusholtz
October 22, 2010 at 9:40pm
I actually believe that conservatives do not care about national security, and haven't done so for some time. The administration run by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (decorated hero of the Vietnam Deferments Brigade) gambled with this country's military and strategic assets with pretty much the responsibility and forethought of a drunken tourist in a Vegas casino. Anyone who's serious about national security would get behind efforts to research, build up, and become a world leader in alternative (non-oil) energy provision; they would strongly support -- rhetorically and financially -- the study of foreign languages and cultures in our high schools and colleges, and they would work hard to create a system of universal medical care that will improve the general health of the whole nation and change the third-world-oligarchy mentality that has taken hold since Reagan. In fact, conservatives will flush this nation's future down the toilet for tax cuts for the rich, and look at you smugly as they do it.
- ironyroad
October 22, 2010 at 11:17pm
With all due respect to Bernstein, I'm going with Benen's simpler version. If I remember correctly, this years deficit is about twice the total of all "domestic discretionary spending", and in any case is significantly larger than that entire category. Predicted revenues from this year cannot sustain the combination of Medicare, Social Security, payments on the national debt, and the military. So if you declare cuts to military spending off limits and do not at the same time advocate for significant tax increases or significant cuts to Medicare and Social Security, you are either non-serious or dishonest.
- JEFF FREY
October 23, 2010 at 12:55am
Minor quibble with Jeff: If one advocates a balanced budget but puts defense spending off-limits for cuts, one can still be serious about fiscal responsibility, if and only if one admits the necessity of raising taxes. The ledger has two sides. Now, in reality, basically all conservatives are against cutting defense spending and they're against raising taxes, so in practice they are in favor of high deficits and national weakness. But we can't look only at the spending side of the ledger; the revenue side counts, too, and offers theoretical room for intellectually honest advocacy of high defense spending and low deficits.
- rhubarbs
October 24, 2010 at 12:44pm
Check it again, rhubarbs, I said the same as you. Same conclusion, too: they are not serious.
- JEFF FREY
October 25, 2010 at 12:09am