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August 8, 2011
Samuelson: Deal Was Victory For the Welfare State Over National Defense
Topics: Political News and commentariesRobert Samuelson argues in yesterday's Washington Post that it was liberal protectors of the entitlements, not the Tea Party, that "won" the most in last week's debt deal. As for who the biggest loser is ... that'll be the military (emphasis mine):
Note, for starters, that it won't create much "fiscal drag" on the economy. The spending cuts are simply too small in a $15 trillion annual economy. The deal might shave one-tenth of 1 percent off annual growth in the next decade, estimates the forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers. Note also that the deal isn't a victory for the Tea Party over liberals. Liberals got much of what they wanted while the Tea Party's influence may wane. Taxes may rise if the Bush-Obama tax cuts expire at the end of 2012.Samuelson's absolutely right about the military being the big loser; looking at the facts, not the liberal anti-Tea Party meme, liberals got two-thirds of their agenda passed. However, this is surely not what's being played over and over throughout the Democrat spin-machine known as the mainstream media. As for what the deal does to our defense ... for them it's no big deal as long as they get their welfare state.But the budget deal does reflect national priorities, for good or ill. It's mostly a triumph of the welfare state over the Pentagon. Even before the deal, the Obama administration projected that -- assuming continued withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan -- defense spending would shrink to 15 percent of the budget by 2016. This would be the lowest share since before World War II. The deal's cuts, potentially as much as $950 billion over a decade, would reduce that further. In the 1950s and '60s, defense often was half of the budget.
Drastic military retrenchment seems unwise. It would threaten readiness, training and the replacement of aging weapons. Many planes, ships and vehicles are approaching or have passed their planned service lives, says Heritage Foundation defense analyst Mackenzie Eaglen. To take one example: F-18s were designed to fly for 6,000 hours; now, many are headed toward 10,000, she notes.
The defense cuts show how, contrary to conventional wisdom, the budget deal reflects liberal preferences. The liberal agenda came in three parts: First, raise taxes on high-income Americans to limit domestic spending cuts; second, protect the social "safety net," especially Social Security and Medicare; and finally, cut defense spending to spare (again) domestic programs.
And while we're on the subject of big losers in the deal, shouldn't we include the American people who now face not only a degraded defense, but an ever-increasing national debt and eventual insolvency?
Read Samuelson's whole piece here.
Meanwhile, the very liberal Senator John Kerry is busy blaming America's deficit woes on the Tea Party for "cutting spending."
Go figure!
Posted by Hyscience at August 8, 2011 9:28 AM
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