We’re encouraged by the desire many Republicans in the House have expressed to reduce federal spending. The national debt is approaching $31.5 trillion, having ballooned under Democratic and Republican leadership over the past seven years.
But real deficit reduction would require the hard and uncomfortable work of reforming entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Unfortunately, some lawmakers are focusing instead on cuts to defense spending, which could send a troubling message to the world during a difficult time.
Some, like Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, have hinted the U.S. should reconsider how much it is spending to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s invasion. He told Fox News over the weekend that the U.S. should focus instead on how best to protect itself.
Certainly, no program should receive automatic budget increases without demonstrating need, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue here. The Biden administration just successfully passed an $858 billion military budget, a 10% increase. But the administration has proposed cutting back on Army troops as well as retiring aging Navy and Air Force fleets. Military cuts typically have been supported by progressives in the Democratic Party, not conservative Republicans.
However, Jordan told Fox News his concern is “getting rid of all the woke policies in our military,” and spending more on troops.
Woke policies won’t necessarily disappear with budget cuts. That would require systemic and cultural changes.
In any event, the harm from cutting military budgets at this time ought to be obvious. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, articulated it well on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday. It would be, he said, a “horrible idea when you have (an) aggressive Russia in Ukraine, you have a growing threat of China in the Pacific.”
“How am I going to look at our allies in the eye and say, ‘I need you to increase your defense budget,’ but yet America is going to decrease ours?”
And any lawmaker who doesn’t understand the connection between helping Ukraine defend itself and helping U.S. national security doesn’t understand the world in which we live. Russia’s aggressions are taking place on the doorstep of NATO. America and her allies need to send a strong message, through unity as well as military aid, that such ambitions won’t be tolerated.
By extension, China should be dissuaded from attacking Taiwan. Military cuts at this time might embolden aggressors.
It’s still uncertain what promises or concessions House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made in order to secure the votes needed to make him speaker. As some lawmakers noted, a House speaker could not guarantee cuts to any budget. He could, however, put certain people in strategic positions to push for such a thing, or to bring it to a vote.
Regardless, the Democratic majority in the Senate would be unlikely to go along with significant cuts to military spending, barring an unlikely alliance between hard-line Republicans and the left wing of the Democratic Party.
The United States is indeed in need of fiscal responsibility. Allowing a form of “sequestration,” the automatic spending cuts that took effect a decade ago, would be a thoughtless way to cut budgets. A far better solution would be to thoughtfully and deliberately reform entitlements while finding the least impactful ways to raise more revenue.
In 2010, former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican, and former Clinton administration chief of staff Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, headed a commission that came up with a credible path toward fiscal responsibility. It included both cuts and tax hikes, and it was promptly dismissed by both parties.
Incidentally, the national debt at the time was only $12 trillion.
It’s tempting to speculate on where the nation would be today if that plan, or something like it, had been implemented. It would have capped military spending and reduced retirement benefits.
But, despite the threat of terrorist attacks at the time, the world of 2010 seems less dangerous than the world of today.
We are reminded of the great former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, famously told President George H.W. Bush, “Remember George, this is no time to go wobbly.”
Real budget reform and deficit reductions would be welcomed today. But the U.S. can’t afford to signal to its enemies that it is wobbling on its commitment to defend freedom.