Defense cuts: three things Americans should know

The US Capitol building is seen November 2011, in Washington. (Carolyn Kaster/AP/File)

Supporters of robust defense spending tend to justify these expenditures by claiming that the world is much more dangerous today. That?s what former Vice President Dick Cheney argued in a closed-door session with Republicans on Capitol Hill this week.

?No disrespect, but the evidence for that is pretty thin,? Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, points out. ?The Soviet Union on its worst day was capable of ending life on this planet in a few minutes. It could do more damage in a few minutes than Al Qaeda has managed to inflict in over a decade.?

Still, the United States continues to spend some $520 billion every year ? plus the costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars ? for US military operations. In an acknowledgement of this, Reps. Mick Mulvaney (R) of South Carolina and Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts proposed an amendment to freeze Pentagon spending at current levels.

?When we are discussing cutting even the most basic social safety net programs, we think increasing the defense base budget makes all our exhortations about the deficit ring hollow,? they wrote in a letter to their fellow lawmakers prior to the vote this week. ?You may want to keep this letter,? they added. ?The chances of receiving one from a more unlikely pair of your colleagues in your time in Congress are probably pretty low.?

The amendment passed with support from 158 Democrats and 89 Republicans, and the House on Thursday voted to give the Pentagon $607 billion in total this year. This is more than the Senate ? which has yet to propose its own version of the defense bill ? or the White House says its wants.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/IVyJ6Y4-iGk/Defense-cuts-three-things-Americans-should-know

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