The Big Budget Cut the GOP Forgot
When it comes to the first and easiest-to-cut part of the federal budget, Republicans deserve at least a small pat on the back. They promised to cut lots of wasteful domestic programs and, now, they've done so. Promises made. Promises kept.
All that said, the real waste comes from entitlement and defense spending (both rose although the defense budget increase was smaller than either the President or House Republicans wanted) and, while Republicans have devoted lots of attention to entitlements, not nearly enough has been paid to the size of the defense budget. If Republicans want to prove their seriousness about fiscal discipline, this needs to change. While the simple act of withdrawing from Iraq is going to rein it in a bit, there needs to be deeper cuts still.
Right now, the United States spends 4.3 percent of GDP on the military. This gives the United States a larger military budget than the entire rest of the world combined and an overall dominance so vast that no nation state could possibly win any sort of traditional battle against American troops.
The four other permanent security council members spend, on average, 2.5 percent of their GDPs on defense. Here's a thought about goal setting: aim to cut American military spending to a bit over 3 percent of GDP (more deeply if, by some miracle, Afghanistan stabilizes.) The sheer complexity of defense spending and the inherent inability to know what type of threats the country might face in the future will make the trade-offs difficult but, if we need to cut, the military shouldn't escape the budget axe.