SPEND IT ON DEFENSE
SPEND IT ON DEFENSE The federal treasury (barring a recession) will run an astonishing $3 trillion cumulative surplus over the next ten years. The prospect of so much ready money has brought...
...But the promised restoration is chimerical...
...But we no longer have them, not by a long shot...
...And so on...
...And, yes, it has so far proved enough to carry us from success to success overseas...
...The earlier, Senate-passed Pentagon appropriation is for less than the president's request...
...Yet the Pentagon starves—we say so advisedly— even for cash sufficient to sustain what are universally understood to be its immediate, near-term missions, let alone for investments necessary to get us where we should want to be a generation from now...
...A few weeks back, the House of Representatives passed a Pentagon budget for 2000 that barely exceeds the president's request...
...Building-wide, the Pentagon each year needs close to $30 billion more than it has just for basic ammunition, parts, and supplies...
...In the days of primarily fixed-place deployments in Europe and South Korea, for example, it was a rule of thumb that for every forward-stationed soldier there must be at least two in the rear...
...An Army that used five and a half heavy divisions in the Persian Gulf War today has a worldwide total of only six...
...If there are to be federal surpluses, they should be spent—first and foremost—on defense...
...That is $900 million more than the 1999 baseline, or an increase of just three-tenths of one percent over five full years...
...And then there is the defense budget, weirdly near-invisible in all this fiscal to-ing and fro-ing...
...During the Kosovo bombing, its A-10 pilots were forced to spend their own money to buy retail global-positioning receivers for use with outdated survival radios...
...Military spending to protect and advance national interests would seem properly the highest priority of our federal government...
...The prospect of so much ready money has brought Washington's legislative and policy engines, largely cold and silent since the end of 1995, roaring back to life...
...Aircraft carriers now go to sea understaffed by as many as 1,000 sailors...
...To ensure that we maintain our technological advantage over potential adversaries a decade or two out...
...The Congress appears similarly disinclined...
...One would think this rule applied with special force today as the United States, the "sole remaining superpower," is uniquely blessed and cursed with unprecedented global opportunities, responsibilities, and challenges...
...The Air Force's stockpile of air-launched cruise missiles is almost entirely depleted...
...To begin with, post-Cold War budget cutbacks have caused serious degradation of the military's short-term combat readiness...
...Six months ago, the Clinton administration released a multi-year Defense Department budget plan...
...Deficits can no longer excuse the neglect...
...A Pentagon overburdened as never before is now accorded a lower share of the federal budget, representing a lower share of national economic output, than at any time since Adolf Hitler invaded Poland...
...To ensure that we field missile defense systems for threats against our forward-deployed troops and materiel—and against American and allied civilians...
...But, away from view of the infrared CNN cameras, our Pentagon is badly limping...
...As it could and should be...
...The Clinton White House eyes instead a pricey expansion of the Medicare program—though it also claims that a good bit of future revenue should simply be banked, given the post-2010 actuarial crisis facing both the Medicare and Social Security entitlements (a crisis the administration has heretofore scrupulously ignored...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
...This year, there are just under 1.4 million active-duty personnel in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force— 740,000 fewer than in 1989 and the fewest since 1940...
...All of this is to say nothing of the major expenditures that will be required to ensure that we take full advantage of the anticipated "revolution in military affairs...
...It got only 21 of them off the ground...
...Similar shortages obtain in the other services...
...Underneath the din produced by this debate, executive branch officials and congressional appropriators in both parties mutter that the spending caps imposed by the 1997 budget agreement are much too tight to meet a whole variety of domestic needs...
...Yes, we are the most powerful nation on Earth...
...Since 1992, the number of unexpected deployments has vastly expanded—think Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo—so the old ratio is obsolete...
...It was advertised as restorative, especially where long-deferred procurement of next-generation weapons systems is concerned...
...Most Americans welcome our now-dominant muscle, of course, and most too-casually assume that it will be preserved indefinitely...
...If enacted, this plan would produce, in fiscal year 2004, government-wide national defense spending of $283.9 billion in inflation-adjusted outlays...
...For the eighth year in a row—and the fourteenth year of the past fifteen—defense spending is likely to decline...
...And an America that pretends to assume its responsibilities as the superpower of principle cannot afford to limp at all...
...Last August, the Marine Aircraft Group at Cherry Point, North Carolina, was ordered to fly its 42 Harrier jets out of the path of approaching Hurricane Bonnie...
...How can this be...
...It is chronically and critically short of helicopter pilots, in particular, and junior-grade and noncommissioned officers generally...
...the others were incapacitated by missing parts...
...To maintain general readiness, we need more men in uniform, maybe as many as we had when there was a Soviet Union...
...THE PENTAGON IS STARVED FOR CASH SUFFICIENT TO SUSTAIN WHAT ARE UNIVERSALLY UNDERSTOOD TO BE ITS NEAR-TERM MISSIONS...
...Hill Republicans would like to return nearly $800 billion of the pending surplus to taxpayers...
...And the Clinton administration seems unwilling to do anything about it...
...And no service comes close to adequately equipping its troops...
...That would be nice...
...Current spending levels cripple our ability to meet all these fundamental obligations...
...The Navy lacks 1,000 mission-specified pilots and has 18,000 unfilled billets in its shrinking fleet of ships...
...Yes, we spend more than any other on our military...
Vol. 4 • August 1999 • No. 44
