It's time for a reality check ...

Cutting defense spending means cutting jobs

There was a magic moment on defense spending when George H.W. Bush was President. 

He was in California being hammered by politicians there about when they were going to see the “peace dividend” from the end of the Cold War. They expected a lot more money to be available for social programs, since we didn’t need to spend so much on defense anymore.  

He responded, okay … which bases in California did they want him to shut down?

Not the answer they were expecting.  It was priceless to see their faces. 

Bush 41 nailed it.  If you want to cut defense spending you’re automatically going to cut jobs.

The only questions are where and how many. 

When you close U.S. bases, cut defense contracts, or eliminate defense-related work, the economic impact is huge.  Specialized high-paying, high-skill jobs disappear overnight.  Plants close.  A lot of smaller subcontractors belly up.  And a major source of tax revenues to the state and the local community evaporate.  As do corporate contributions to civic projects. 

That’s unfortunate, yet inevitable.  It’s always a nasty possibility of reliance on big defense department contracts.  When you sleep with the elephants, if they roll over you’re dead. 

The U.S. Army may decide the latest, greatest SuperWhamoGizmo is a piece of overpriced crap that at best functions only about 3% of the time.  It may then move to stop its production and deployment.  If the military is successful, the civilian contactors associated with it take a hit. 

Sometimes.  Sometimes not, if they have the right political connections.

Now everybody who has the good sense God gave a sweet potato knows there’s incredible waste and redundancy in a large part of our defense spending.   It’s what you’d expect when the numbers are so enormous, and so many politicians and lobbyists are involved. 

No one knows that better than Congress. 

Representatives and senators know full well that many of the defense projects they support and keep funding have very little impact on our military readiness or national security.  But they are important to their chances of getting re-elected in their home districts or states, and to continue to receive hefty campaign contributions from lobbyists for defense contractors.   

A good example is the current battle in Congress over the Abrams tanks.  The Pentagon doesn’t want any more of them, has a bunch mothballed already, and doesn’t see the need for these tanks – designed specifically to kill other tanks – when we’re not fighting against tanks anymore. 

Predictably, key members of Congress disagree, especially those from states where the Abrams tanks and components are manufactured.  They want to keep funding something the Pentagon doesn’t want or apparently need. 

As if a bunch of political hacks know more than the folks who run the most sophisticated and expensive military in the world every day … 

General Dynamics, the contractor building the Abrams, is greasing the palms of key allies in Congress to keep the funding flowing, and, not surprisingly, has built a solid bloc of support there.  So unless magic happens, it’s likely we’ll keep spending billions on tanks the military doesn’t want and doesn’t plan to use.  

Then there’s the move by the Obama Administration to require the military to use biofuels as part of its green initiatives, although they are claiming that it’s to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  Yeah, sure. 

One problem:  the cost of biofuel for the military is running around $26 a gallon compared to conventional jet and marines fuels of about $4 a gallon, according to recent reports. 

Regardless of what a silly decision this appears to be, it’s attracted an almost perfect ménage à trois of political interest groups where the “green” folks are in bed with farm-state legislators who are in bed with the biofuels producers.  Consequently, despite the dismal economics, we’ll likely have the “greenest” military in the world at a highly inflated cost if this prevails, for purely political reasons. 

So on one hand, you have a push by many in Congress and the Obama Administration to cut military spending; on the other you have a never-ending effort to milk the military budget to  satisfy politicians and their constituents. 

You can’t have it both ways.  Cutting defense spending means cutting jobs, regardless of whether you’re cutting fat or muscle.  It’s a fact of life.  And if you put a lot of people out of work here as a result – not just those directly employed, but the thousands employed indirectly – you’re adding to domestic unemployment. 

Not to worry; most of the proposed cuts will never happen.  They almost never do.  It took years and a lot of political gamesmanship to close unneeded facilities and bases in the U.S. And as one base faced closure, another base expanded in most cases. 

In this election year there will be a lot of political theater about the need to cut, cut, cut, which will be offset by the clamor to spend, spend, spend on projects and bases in key Electoral College states and in the backyards of powerful Congressional members. 

If we were really serious about cutting defense spending, we’d let the military alone decide what it needs and what it doesn’t.  It would also be up to the military – not some politicians – to make the final decisions of where to cut if we needed to reduce their budget.

After all, they are the ones tasked with being ready to defend us when and if bad things happen in the world.  They are the ones on the line.  Literally.  

It just makes sense that they’d have a better handle on what’s required.  What’s nice but not necessary.  And what’s a complete waste of tax dollars.  They know the difference.    

You have to believe they’d make better, more rational decisions than people in Congress who treat the military budget as a personal piggy bank to reward friends and contributors.