Off The Table

(Source.)

Nope, no room for cuts there. Take it from food stamps.

De-Fense, De-Fense

Fear not, though:

The U.S. continues to spend the most in absolute dollars, accounting for 60 percent of the world's total defense spending.

But you know what M.C. Hammer said.

War Zone

I've said it before (no links, sipping gin): Robert Gates impresses me. He, alone among Republicans, is willing to address reducing defense spending. His latest announcement, and the response thereto, is as revelatory as it is predictable. His plan is hardly a huge shift in the paradigm; disturbance in the force, if any, is minimal.

WASHINGTON – For the first time in more than a decade defined by costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon announced plans Thursday to freeze its ballooning budget, forcing the services to shrink the Army and Marines and increase health care premiums for military retirees and their families.

The Pentagon says it can stop asking for annual budget increases in 2015, adjusting its spending only for inflation. The last time the Pentagon's budget went down was in 1998...

... Although it took Gates more than 30 minutes to read an explanation of the reductions, he called the proposals modest and realistic.

This, of course, gives Republicans the vapors. Right on cue, they lashed out at our terrorist-loving president:

Almost immediately the proposal ran into opposition in Congress, including Republicans who say President Barack Obama is short-changing the military.

"I'm not happy," said Rep. Buck McKeon, who as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee helps oversee the military budget.

"This is a dramatic shift for a nation at war and a dangerous signal from the commander-in-chief," McKeon, R-Calif., added.

(That's from the guy who sees the war in Afghanistan as fulfilling Mormon prophesy.)

Nor were Democrats uniformly on board. There's money in that there budget:

"I'm willing to work with Secretary Gates and the president to cut wasteful defense spending, but cutting the budget on the backs of Ohio's workers is unacceptable," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio

Hope? None. Political courage? In the White House, maybe. Public support? Dip me in hot water and call me Earl Grey.

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P.S.: Here's another reason to admire Gates.

Perfect Example

It should be clear to everyone by now that Congressional Republicans, the RWS™, and everyone at Fox "news" would rather see President Obama fail than see our country succeed. It's as overt as an oil spill. The best thing that could happen, in their eyes, would be for the country to fall into another recession. (Well, that, or the nuking of a city by al Queda.) So here's how it goes:

Among economists there is some disagreement about the size and scope of the recovery act (with at least two Nobel winners saying it was too small); but almost none think it was unnecessary. Deficits, though not particularly desirable, are an unavoidable consequence. For now. And only the most hard-core deniers argue that the stimulus hasn't been of benefit. So what's a right-winger to do? Inheriting the worse economic calamity since The Depression, promising to reverse it, and succeeding, Obama has put the Republicans, whose policies drove us off the cliff, in a bit of a bind.

Easy. Rail about the deficits. Whip their easily-whipped, frightened, and uninformed teabagging minions into a frenzy; send the talking points to Fox "news," see to it that their cadre of echoing RWS™, who have nothing in mind but their ratings and their next dose of oxycontin-lithium, will pump up the volume. And presto, as darker night follows night: in a perfect meld of the credulous and the cruel, the paranoid and the pseudopatriot, the disingenuous and the disturbed, you're on the way to wrecking the economy -- AGAIN -- in order to win elections.

It's not hard to imagine the meetings in the unprepped bowels of the Congressional Republican hiding places. "Deficits," they announce. "It's all we've got." A plan forms: call Dick Armey and get him to roll out his astroturf, put it under the feet of his teabaggers. Deficits, deficits: play them like a vuvuzela, get Hannity on the phone, leave a message for Beck in his tinfoil closet. And be sure, for god's sake, not to mention that ninety percent of the deficit going forward is from Bush's tax cuts and spending increases; don't ever refer to the things Obama has already done to lower deficits; and, whatever you do, don't let anyone talk about the impact of more recession on our economic future. Deficits, just deficits. It's simple, it's perfect for people for whom bumper stickers have replaced newspapers. It'll work.

It is working.

"If Congress doesn't provide additional stimulus spending, economists inside and outside the administration warn that the nation risks a prolonged period of high unemployment or, more frightening, a descent back into recession. But a competing threat -- the exploding federal budget deficit -- seems to be resonating more powerfully in Congress and among voters."

"Seems to be," all right. And why is that? See above. Egged on by people for whom national interest is the furthest thing from their minds, people have come to prefer economic calamity over short-term deficit spending. Rightfully, Obama has pledged to address deficits when the time is right. Wrongfully, with only their return to political power in mind, the selfish have convinced the short-sighted that the time is now.

You sort of have to tip your hat to the brilliance: all it takes is a surpassingly cynical (if accurate) view of voters and willingness to lie to them unendingly, to deceive them without a second thought. In Twenty-First Century America, if a party untethers itself from love of anything but its own power, nothing is impossible.

Cut Up

When is a defense spending cut not a cut? When it's not. Be that as it may, you have to admire Obama (I do, anyway) for giving a shot at rationalizing Pentagon money, particularly now, when the right wing screamers are literally calling for "a stake in his heart," and claiming he's a Nazi who plans concentration camps and "reeducation camps." The reaction to his proposal to raise military spending by four percent, by that measure, is hardly unexpected.

Defense spending has always been politicized, with knees (and other body parts) jerking all over the country. Even thoughtful discussion -- were such a thing still possible -- would raise difficult issues. Republicans love to cry "soft on defense;" but when Senator Inhofe calls it "disarming America" and "ravaging the military," one can only believe we'll never hear the issues addressed rationally.

Take one example. As successes have only come when all the launch data were known in advance, the missile defense shield seems to me much over-hyped and under-needed; especially when nukes are said to fit in suitcases. I stand ready to be convinced of its purpose and effectiveness; but it's no stretch for me to believe it's something without which we can do.

How about considering a couple dozen overseas bases, while we're at it?

Robert Gates seems a thoughtful man, and hardly a peacenik. You'd think that Republicans, who have magically -- and quite suddenly -- regained their professed love of budgetary balance, would be willing to join their fellow party-member in an honest discussion of what we need and what we don't, militarily. Like so many other imperatives, it has been ignored and put off for too long. I can't judge the merits of Gates' plan so far; if anything it appears he hasn't yet gone nearly far enough. But in scrutinizing specific programs, he's taken a step in the right direction, and it's clear his fellow Republicans won't let a little fact-free hyperbole get in the way of their opposition. It's one thing to disagree, to make an argument based on information, to present alternatives and to defend them. It's quite another -- and it's become GOP SOP at this point -- simply to make stuff up.

So I continue to think that in the long run, we're screwed. Politicians like Inhofe keep getting elected, while Beck and Hannity and Bachmann and Limbaugh and Coulter and Savage and Ingraham and O'Reilly keep peddling predatory prevarications to their paranoid and panicky patrons. If such obvious emptiness hasn't been rejected by now, I doubt it ever will. Rationally to discuss making actual cuts in military spending? Unthinkable.
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