OPINION:
The debate over the 2021 budget and the constantly growing federal deficit has been heightened by the upcoming elections. The wrong target is being blamed for the problem.
Revenues have reached unprecedented heights during the Trump administration. Fiscal 2019 saw an intake of $3.462 billion, $133 billion higher than in fiscal 2018. Despite that, the FY 2019 deficit was $984 billion. Some pundits and politicians have sought to make a link between President Trump’s move to undo the Obama defense cuts, a move he desperately needed to make in light of the threats from Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Pyongyang and terrorists.
The drive to cut the Pentagon is based on faulty logic.
In FY 2010, the defense budget was $784.84 billion. The figure was lowered each year, descending by $179 billion to $605.8 billion in FY 2017. Confidence buoyed by that move and the Obama administration’s relative pacifism, Russia invaded Ukraine, and China invaded the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone. Moscow built the world’s premier nuclear force, and Beijing emerged as a military superpower. Despite the realities of international threats, progressives in the United States continued to press for lowered defense budgets.
Facing an electorate reluctant to agree with that idea, Democrats sought to win over voters, particularly centrists and fiscal conservatives, to their perspective by citing the Pentagon budget as a factor in the national debt. The facts are not on their side. The U.S. national debt nearly doubled during the Obama administration, at precisely the same time the defense budget was being slashed.
In 2010, national security accounted for 20.1 percent of Washington’s spending. By 2015, that number was cut to 15.9 percent. Contrary to the Pentagon’s critics claims, defense does not take up the lion’s share of Washington’s outlays. It accounts for just about 15 percent of the federal budget. Defense dollars are nowhere near proportional peacetime highs.
Historically, defense spending has reached one of the lowest levels, as a proportion of GDP, in the past 59 years. 1960 saw the Pentagon accounting for 8.62 percent, and staying above current levels, often considerably so, for over a half century. Only the years 1998—2001 saw lower figures, as the full impact of the U.S.S.R’s downfall was being felt and China’s massive buildup was just starting to commence.
But there is one way in which attempts to obtain appropriate funding for the military have played a role in the national debt and annual deficits.
Congress is, by its very nature particularly in light of the two-year election cycle, reluctant to say no to any spending program, and the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, which can roadblock any defense spending bill, must be dealt with. The result is that the two sides compromise with each other by saying yes to each other’s priorities, rather than weed out those that are nonessential or wasteful.
It’s as though a family budget was agreed to by saying that funding a luxury vacation was as important as repairing the roof on their home.
Examples of nonessential programs, large and small, that gained considerable increases during these years of high deficits abound. Citizens Against Government Waste reports that the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs grant program gained a 358.3 percent increase over the 2017 earmark. The group notes that if one recipient, the Kennedy Center, had charged an extra 30 cents a ticket it could have done away with the need for its federal funding.
The need to undo the Obama-era cuts and respond to the current challenges of Russia’s vastly modernized nuclear arsenal, China’s major advances in weaponry, the belligerence of both and the other threats throughout the globe are obvious and should be above Washington’s annual exercise in horse trading. However, particularly in an election year, that certainly is not going to happen.
• Frank V. Vernuccio Jr. serves as editor in chief of the New York Analysis of Policy & Government.
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