House Budget chair Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) says there’s a growing sentiment among House GOP caucus members that Congress ought to make larger defense spending cuts as a way to relieve the national debt. Speaking after his foreign policy address last night, Ryan said he attributes this libertarian or “inward streak” among conservative Republicans in the House, particularly among freshmen, to fatigue over long wars and the dominance of fiscal issues within the national debate.
“You have people from military backgrounds [in Congress] who saw a lot of waste in the Pentagon who sort of replicate that experience writ large,” Ryan said. “There is a growing group within our caucus that is headed in that direction, and I think I would simply say it’s fatigue.” Ryan explained that when crafting this year’s budget, one Republican member on the committee initially wanted a trillion dollars in defense cuts over the next decade.
Echoing the themes of his speech, however, Ryan reiterated his belief that America’ priorities with foreign policy and national defense can’t be compromised over budget cutting. “You can’t ignore problems in DoD’s budget,” Ryan said. “But we’ve got to make sure we don’t ignore the mission, and there comes a point where you can really, really compromise the mission. We’ve got to watch that.”
As Ryan stated in his address, defense spending has shrunk as a percentage of the federal budget–from 39 percent in 1970 to 16 percent today–while entitlement spending is on a path to crowd out all other government spending.
