National Security Requires Healthy Defense Budget

Human Events, Feb 12, 2007 by Franc, Mike

As bleak as the picture may look today, the coming fiscal crunch brought on by the retirements of 78 million Baby Boomers promises to make the situation much worse.

My Heritage Foundation colleague. Baker Spring, points out that since 1970 the historical ratio between spending on defense and on Medicare, Medicaid and Social security has flipped. In 1970, military spending as a percentage of GDP consumed more than twice the proportion of GDP consumed by the Big Three entitlements (8.1% compared to 3.9%). Today, defense spending has fallen to 3.9% of GDP while entitlement spending has more than doubled, consuming 8.3% of GDP. By 2030, these major entitlements will absorb roughly 85% of all federal revenues.

The Boomer retirements will place enormous pressure on national security spending, as lawmakers face the political Hobson's choice of funding popular welfare-style giveaways or the military. Choosing butter over guns. Spring warns us, could "jeopardize our nation's ability to wage war over the long term. Entitlement reform," he concludes, "is a national security issue."

Beefing Up Defense

To prevent the return to a "hollow military," there are several steps Congress should take, including:

* Commit to spend at least 4% of GDP on our national security. By any historical standard, this is a modest level. Yet it's sufficient to provide an adequate military and not unduly burden the economy. Throughout the decades-long Cold War. for example, defense budgets averaged almost 7.5% of GDP.

* Congress should fund war-fighting costs related to the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through supplemental appropriations. Core service functions, including crucial research and development, weapons procurement, and manpower costs, should be funded through the regular budget.

* Make national security spending more efficient. In particular. Congress should end the practice of earmarking Defense Department appropriations. Almost 40% of research and development dollars, for example, are earmarked to be spent in the districts and states of particular members of Congress.

* Congress should allocate a greater proportion of lhe Defense budget to modernization, especially procurement. With China poised to become a heavily armed hegemonic power in the Pacific and rogue states such as North Korea and Iran prone to destabilizing and possibly destructive behavior, this is no time to allow our naval and airborne capabilities to decline.

* Provide adequate funding for missile defense. A fairly modest investment would allow us to accelerate testing and improve the operational capability of our current ground-based missile defenses. Lawmakers should also insist that the military work to develop space-based platforms.

Mr. Franc has held a number of positions on Capitol Hill and is author of the weekly HUMAN EVENTS feature "Legislative Lowdown."