Bad Timing and Budgets

Phil Carter points to a Washington Post story on some in Congress moving to cut defense expenditures. It's pretty bad timing, one might say, to cut defense expenditures during a war. Whether or not the priorities within the Defense Department are right is another thing, but I cannot see a justification for shrinking the Pentagon budget when we're at war and overcommitted as it is. Worse, though, is the lack of any reference to put the numbers in perspective. Here are the numbers, from the FY2005 budget summary, against a GDP of $12402 billon:

Category	Raw Amount (Billions)	% of Budget	% of GDP
Defense Spending	429	17.9%	3.46%
Non-Defense Discretionary Spending	485	20.2%	3.91%
Social Security	510	21.3%	4.11%
Medicare/Medicaid	478	19.9%	3.85%
Other Non-Discretionary Spending	320	13.3%	2.58%

In other words, the total Federal drain on the economy is a little under 19.4%. Of that, both Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid consume larger parts of the budget than defense spending. In fact, between them, Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security consume about 8% of the entire economy, twice as much as defense...in wartime...before the Social Security crisis comes about and before last year's ill-advised prescription drug benefit hits Medicaid with full force.

So what the Post is trying to do is misdirection: focusing negative attention on programs that Post's editors disfavor, while ignoring the much larger expenditures for programs the Post's editors favor. But it's deja moo (I've seen this bull before), because this is the exact same kind of argument made in the past to justify cutting defense to the bone, and consequences to the nation be damned.

Well, during the Cold War that was ill-considered, but during time of war it's execrable. (I'm sure the Post's editors can look the word up, if it loses them.)

Posted by Jeff at March 9, 2004 10:19 PM | Link Cosmos