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 Washington’s legislative and policy engines, largely cold and silent since the end of 1995, roaring back to life.
Hill Republicans would like to return nearly $ 800 billion of the pending surplus to taxpayers. That would be nice. 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 hereto-fore scrupulously ignored). 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.
And then there is the defense budget, weirdly near-invisible in all this fiscal to-ing and fro-ing. Military spending to protect and advance national interests would seem properly the highest priority of our federal government. 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. Most Americans welcome our now-dominant muscle, of course, and most too-casually assume that it will be preserved indefinitely. As it could and should be.
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.
How can this be? To begin with, post-Cold War budget cutbacks have caused serious degradation of the military’s short-term combat readiness. 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. Since 1992, the number of unexpected deployments has vastly expanded — think Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo — so the old ratio is obsolete. To maintain general readiness, we need more men in uniform, maybe as many as we had when there was a Soviet Union.
But we no longer have them, not by a long shot. 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. An Army that used five and a half heavy divisions in the Persian Gulf War today has a worldwide total of only six. It is chronically and critically short of helicopter pilots, in particular, and junior-grade and noncommissioned officers generally. The Navy lacks 1,000 mission-specified pilots and has 18,000 unfilled billets in its shrinking fleet of ships. Aircraft carriers now go to sea understaffed by as many as 1,000 sailors. Similar shortages obtain in the other services.
And no service comes close to adequately equipping its troops. The Air Force’s stockpile of air-launched cruise missiles is almost entirely depleted. 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. 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. It got only 21 of them off the ground; the others were incapacitated by missing parts. And so on. Building-wide, the Pentagon each year needs close to $ 30 billion more than it has just for basic ammunition, parts, and supplies.
Six months ago, the Clinton administration released a multi-year Defense Department budget plan. It was advertised as restorative, especially where long-deferred procurement of next-generation weapons systems is concerned. But the promised restoration is chimerical. If enacted, this plan would produce, in fiscal year 2004, government-wide national defense spending of $ 283.9 billion in inflation-adjusted outlays. That is $ 900 million more than the 1999 baseline, or an increase of just three-tenths of one percent over five full years. 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. And the Clinton administration seems unwilling to do anything about it.
The Congress appears similarly disinclined. A few weeks back, the House of Representatives passed a Pentagon budget for 2000 that barely exceeds the president’s request. The earlier, Senate-passed Pentagon appropriation is for less than the president’s request. For the eighth year in a row — and the fourteenth year of the past fifteen — defense spending is likely to decline.
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.” To ensure that we maintain our technological advantage over potential adversaries a decade or two out. To ensure that we field missile defense systems for threats against our forward-deployed troops and material — and against American and allied civilians. Current spending levels cripple our ability to meet all these fundamental obligations.
Yes, we are the most powerful nation on Earth. Yes, we spend more than any other on our military. And, yes, it has so far proved enough to carry us from success to success overseas. But, away from view of the infrared CNN cameras, our Pentagon is badly limping. And an America that pretends to assume its responsibilities as the superpower of principle cannot afford to limp at all. Deficits can no longer excuse the neglect. If there are to be federal surpluses, they should be spent — first and foremost — on defense.
David Tell, for the Editors
