The Defense budget

[erik_kosberg]

Thomas Friedman’s recent op-ed piece about NATO contains this:

If President Bush gets the defense budget increase he asked for in his State of the Union address, U.S. defense spending will equal the defense budgets of the next 15 highest countries — combined.

Would someone please tell me that Friedman is delusional, has his statistics wrong, and that we’re not really spending that much on the military.

[realtraveller]

Here's the better question:

To all those who would NOT increase defense spending post 9-11, who would NOT change security measures at airports, who would NOT improve our border security, who would NOT wage war to eliminate terrorists, what would you do?

It seems to me that the administration's critics have not proposed any sort of alternate plan that would protect the country. It's very easy to sit back and criticize.

[vonboob]

17 Billion dollars just for 800 Crusader howitzers: best weapon against terrorists...
Yes it is easy to criticize, too easy!

[CurtisEdmonds]

This looks to be correct.

http://www.cdi.org/issues/wme/

[hadassahchana[$]]

To all those who would NOT increase defense spending post 9-11, who would NOT change security measures at airports, who would NOT improve our border security, who would NOT wage war to eliminate terrorists, what would you do?

First, why do you assume that anyone who is not in favour of increased defense spending is also not in favour of increased airport security etc.? Those are seperate budgets.

Also, it doesn't seem to me that our already large defense budget was able to prevent the tragedy of Sept. 11. I don't see any indication that spending more is going to make anyone in the US any safer.

I don't know yet how I feel about the increase in defense spending. At the moment, it doesn't seem like a great idea, but I am willing to be convinced by a good argument in favour.


Cindy

[kurt_messick]

This is not unusual. Of course, it is the case that many of the closest allies to the US do not in fact have to spend as much because the US spends so much.

It is also the case when you have the average soldier in the US making ten times the wages of the average soldier in a country such as Russia (just an example; actual stats may vary), even with roughly the same army size the US will spend ten times as much on wages and benefit structures.

[realtraveller]

So many of the editorialists like Friedman have only criticism without an alternate plan.

Don't like that soldiers will be getting a raise? If you think they make too much, please elaborate?

Don't think a piece of expensive equipment is necessary? Why not. what are its flaws?

Don't want any changes in our visa procedures? What would you do?

It has nothing to do with which budget the money is coming out of. It is a fundamental flaw in so much of the critiques, commentaries and editorials I've been reading ever since 9-11. Criticism that is not constructive.

[mshawpyle]

Originally posted by erik_kosberg
Would someone please tell me that Friedman is delusional, has his statistics wrong, and that we’re not really spending that much on the military.

And this would be a problem why, exactly? Especially given that the common defense - as opposed to school lunches - is one of the few legitimate purposes for which a government is instituted....

Bear in mind that we are carrying the load, as has been pointed out, not only for ourselves but for a not a few of our feckless and backstabbing 'allies.' Bear further in mind that this is sound strategic planning, akin to the 'two-power' standard the Admiralty used to use. And finally, let us bear in mind that there's still ample validity in the old proverb, Si vis pacem, para bellum.

I am perpetually astounded around here, I'll say that much.

[vonboob]

Maybe we could try something new for a change like:
Si vis pacem para solidaritatem...

[CurtisEdmonds]

Four small points here. (I was running late for dinner when I posted earlier.)

1. There's a lot of spending in the "defense" budget that is not terribly defense-related. For example, the Corps of Engineers funding for flood control is in there; I don't expect that's an item in most military budgets. Also, there is one heck of a lot of research and development costs involved. Things like the Osprey tilt-rotor (which always gets castigated by defense budget critics) are terribly expensive because there is so much R&D into making a working prototype. (And unlike in the civilian world, the DoD won't get a payoff off its R&D spending, that'll all go to Bell Helicopter once they get a civilian tilt-rotor in service.)

2. Also, there's some spending that seems really wasteful but isn't. The Navy (last I checked) was building new submarines it didn't really need. At first glance, this seems like a huge political payoff to the defense contractors. The logical thing would be to cancel the submarine construction, right? Problem is, the minute you do that, you put the company out of business, and you lose the jobs of all the people that build the sub, and if you need submarines in the future, you won't be able to recreate the company or gather the skilled workforce you need to build the things; building new subs would be awesomely expensive and take forever to do. So, it turns out to be a cost-savings to build these incredibly expensive submarines that the Navy doesn't need. (At least that's the argument.)

3. What American soldiers get paid is a scandal and a disgrace and has been for years, and anything that GWB can do to alleviate that is a good thing, unequivocally, absolutely. (Same thing goes for housing and medical.)

4. The huge military budget seems wasteful, but if the alternative is wasting the lives of American soldiers, I'd a hundred times waste dollars.

[theeye]

Originally posted by CurtisEdmonds

3. What American soldiers get paid is a scandal and a disgrace and has been for years, and anything that GWB can do to alleviate that is a good thing, unequivocally, absolutely. (Same thing goes for housing and medical.)

What do American soldiers get paid and what's your basis for claiming that it's such a disgrace?

(Note: I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you here, but I've not heard this argument made before and I'm ignorant of the facts.)

[pisces]

We are in the biggest fight of our lives. WTC was the biggest catastrophe caused by an evil enemy to ever happen in U.S. history, on our own soil. If we aren't going to build up our military now, when should we?

Here's a quote from former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in a chat on 12-07-2001 on CNN:

"We've lost about 40 percent of the effectiveness of the military that we had when we won our stunning victory in the Gulf War. Just the Army... we had about 925,000 after the Gulf War, and now, at the start of the next war, we're down to less than 460,000. That's just one service. We've also had procurement holidays, not acquiring the weapons we need. Clinton cut the funding for research and development that produced weapons that enabled us to win the Gulf War at such little cost. We've also lost substantial air and sea lift, the ability to move troops rapidly to where they need to go. We've also lost substantial arms capabilities because of these procurement holidays. Finally, Clinton used this military that he allowed to be weakened, and called on them to participate in a large number of overseas combat situations that did not serve the security interests of our country. These are not partisan statements, they are sad facts."
http://www.cnn.com/2001/COMMUNITY/12...inberger.cnna/

Another benefit of the defense build-up is increased employment. Maybe we can get back all the jobs that were lost in the aerospace industry after Clinton did the wrongful defense spending cuts in the 1990's.

[vania]

Originally posted by pisces
We are in the biggest fight of our lives. WTC was the biggest catastrophe caused by an evil enemy to ever happen in U.S. history, on our own soil.

Actually, that would be the Civil War, but we were our own enemies then...

[mshawpyle]

Originally posted by vania


Actually, that would be the Civil War, but we were our own enemies then...

I believe you are referring to the War Between the States. (I'm being polite, here in mixed company, and not, say, calling it the War of Northern Aggression. Ahem.)

And in that context ... what's this 'we' business, hmm?

[vania]

Of course ah meant The Wawah of Nowthen Aggression. And ah should've said: they were ouh worst enemies...

(trying to sound like my aunt from South Georgia, who really does sound like that, but having trouble with phonetic spelling....)

[mshawpyle]

Originally posted by theeye

What do American soldiers get paid and what's your basis for claiming that it's such a disgrace?

Please reference http://www.dfas.mil/money/milpay/pay/

[vonboob]

I think I'm getting it all wrong.
If someone chooses to go to West Point instead of to MIT, on graduation is waiting:
A guaranteed job, room/board, uniform, dental/medical, early retirement plan, 24K a year pocket money and no loans to pay for tuition? Something is wrong with this picture yet I can’t point my finger…
Smells almost as good as those brand new Crusaders.

[CurtisEdmonds]

A good Washington Post article on military pay.

Here's a good chart of military pay scales for enlisted men; the information looks accurate although the chart is backward. Your basic Army private gets about $12,000 a year or so.

Good Civil War story:

A Pennsylvania professor was giving his class a walking tour of the Gettysburg battlefield. "Now our troops were over here," he said, "and the enemy troops were over there."

A young student said, "That's not right. Our troops were over there, and the enemy was over here."

The professor said, "I assure you, that's quite wrong. Our troops were here, the enemy was there."

The student said, "Oh, no, I'm quite certain. Our troops were there, and the enemy was here."

The professor asked, "Where were you born?"

The student replied, "In Tennessee."

[CurtisEdmonds]

I think I'm getting it all wrong.

West Point in and of itself is not a terrible deal. I used to work for a U.S. Senator and was gratified to see the number of good young students who wanted to get in, the entrance process is very tough.

But that's officers. Enlisted folks have it very tough, especially if they have families, especially if they are overseas.

[theeye]

Originally posted by CurtisEdmonds
A good Washington Post article on military pay.

Here's a good chart of military pay scales for enlisted men; the information looks accurate although the chart is backward. Your basic Army private gets about $12,000 a year or so.

Slap me now.

I thought you were suggesting that the military was over-paid. Hence my initial surprise and wonder if I was missing something. I'm gathering your outrage is that they are underpaid -- and I tend to agree based on the numbers in the charts posted.

The monthly housing allowance for someone with dependents in my zip code (Upper West Side of Manhattan -- New York City) comes to a bit over $1500. In my neighborhood, that won't get you a decent one bedroom apartment.

I don't know if the housing allowance is taxable or not, but either way that allowance on top of a $12,000 salary is peanuts.

[erik_kosberg]

Is it just that we’re in Manichaean times and that the choices have, by some kind of unspoken consensus, been reduced to two options, (A) we spend as much as the next 15 countries combined or (B) the end of civilization as we know it? Is it really that simple? Is an unwinnable and vaguely defined 50+ year long war utilizing the resources of Option A definitely in our future?

I’ve got no gripe with the idea that those who serve in the military should get paid more than they do now but I read somewhere (anybody got a link?) that military pay and allowances make up a bit less than 30% of the Defense budget so it would be hard to argue that members of the military couldn’t receive their raises by cutting back on bloated DoD wastefulness rather than by taking the money from other Federal programs, raiding Social Security and Medicare, or sinking into deeper deficit spending.

Originally posted by CurtisEdmonds
4. The huge military budget seems wasteful, but if the alternative is wasting the lives of American soldiers, I'd a hundred times waste dollars.

The argument that high military spending will save American lives is not without merit, but every X million of dollars spent on the military is X million dollars not spent on pre-natal care, community policing, prescription health care costs for the elderly, or some other expense that can also save American lives.

Originally posted by mshawpyle
I am perpetually astounded around here, I'll say that much.

Nihil est — in vita priore ego imperator Romanus fui.

Originally posted by pisces
Another benefit of the defense build-up is increased employment.

Ah yes; who needs to weigh the options of guns or butter if you can have buttered guns? Today’s web search quest: find even one marginally reputable source that suggests that military spending is an efficient jobs creation program that creates more jobs per dollar spent than can be created by allocating the money to non-military projects.

[mshawpyle]

Originally posted by erik_kosberg
Is it just that we’re in Manichaean times and that the choices have, by some kind of unspoken consensus, been reduced to two options, (A) we spend as much as the next 15 countries combined or (B) the end of civilization as we know it? Is it really that simple? Is an unwinnable and vaguely defined 50+ year long war utilizing the resources of Option A definitely in our future?

I’ve got no gripe with the idea that those who serve in the military should get paid more than they do now but I read somewhere (anybody got a link?) that military pay and allowances make up a bit less than 30% of the Defense budget so it would be hard to argue that members of the military couldn’t receive their raises by cutting back on bloated DoD wastefulness rather than by taking the money from other Federal programs, raiding Social Security and Medicare, or sinking into deeper deficit spending.

Once again (trust me, this is not ad hominem, but: once again) it is you, my old friend, who has failed to distribute your middle (you want my trainer's pager number?): the sleight of hand inheres in your zero-sum budgetary rhetoric in paragraph 2, supra.

I'm more concerned, frankly, by some of your other apparent suppressed or silent premisses (all your syllogisms turn out to be enthymemes, and All Your Base Are Belong to Us). There's your asserted but unexplored characterization of the war as unwinnable and lengthy. There's your implicit presumption that other governmental spending programs are (I'm granting you, arguendo, your zero-sum approach) A, proper, B, unmarred by waste, which is apparently peculiar to the Pentagon, and C, of equal importance and dignity to defense spending. (How many times do I have to point out the fundamental and self-evident truth that governments are precisely instituted for necessities, such as the common defense, and not for discretionary, 'luxury' programs such as entitlements?) And there's your tacit implication that pursuit of the nation's security objectives, even if lasts as long as or longer than the Cold War, is not worth the candle if it means cuts in midnight basketball and semi-socialized medicine.

(I'm not going to bother being concerned by your declensions and case endings - but oughtn't that be imperator Romanorum?)

The argument for spending at the levels at which we spend relative to other nations has to do with force and force-projection capabilities sufficient to meet more than one threat at a time, just as the Admiralty from the days of Churchill and Fisher to the days of, well, Churchill, the Sequel, generally adhered (even after the inter-war Washington Conference) to a two-power standard, i.e., that the Royal Navy be superior to any combination of the two next most powerful fleets. Before 1914, your very argument was made by Lloyd George, who learnt better the hard way: after all, from 1914 onward, the Navy was ready and preserved the realm while the British Army, whose estimates had been cut to the bone for budgetary reasons (many driven by the then novel notion of social spending), did not show well at all.

Given the magnitude of the task before us, it seems reasonable to be in a position to overwhelm any foreseeable combination, formal or ad hoc and opportunistic, of state enemies: the more so as it will be necessary to confront a good few rogue states to achieve some global tranquility. I have always urged, since 11 SEP 01, that the proper analogies for this struggle - and it may perhaps indeed take fifty years. So be it, the cause being just - the proper analogies go back to the 'shores of Tripoli' (this country's first foreign war was fought in Cousin Tom's administration, to halt the piracy and slave-raiding of the Moslem statelets on the Mediterranean littoral), and to the long suppression of the international slave trade by the Royal Navy and British imperial administrators, missionaries, and troops on the ground in the African hinterland. That took a century, but it effectively succeeded, to the point that chattel slavery now persists only in - you guessed it - the Islamic world. Anyone care to suggest that wasn't 'worth it' - even though, or because, it conferred no material benefit on the British themselves?

Sorry, Erik, but you're not making much headway here with me. Not with these arguments. Let me know when it's time for Round Two.

Ave atque vale!

[erik_kosberg]

Curtis’s point that the Defense budget includes non-defense spending is valid up to a point (when I had a job with the Army Corps of Engineers, my boss was a colonel), the opposite is also true. How much of the military’s nuclear program is paid for with Energy Department funding? In the current vaguely defined war on terrorism, how much of the war will be fought with Justice Department funding?

What the proper rôle of the Federal government should be is a question far beyond the scope of this thread and although few of us have the inclination or time to wade through the 1000+ pages of the proposed budget on a line-by-line basis, those who’ve looked at parts of it have pointed out that some of its priorities are highly questionable.

I didn’t pull 50 years out of thin air, Tony Blair speaks in such terms. And it seems to me that the war is by definition unwinnable. Defeating all terrorist evil-doers is an impossible goal.

BTW, for Caspar Weinberger to say that his partisan statements “are not partisan statements” is more than a tiny bit disingenuous.