Interesting perspective!
Syria: Excuse 535 To Not Cut the
Deficit Volume XVIII No. 37: September 13,
2013
Possible action in Syria has become the most recent excuse du jour
for Pentagon boosters intent on abandoning deficit reduction that Congress and
the Administration agreed to in 2011. There are smart and sensible ways to achieve the $1.2
trillion of savings mandated by the Budget Control Act. Conveniently saying
“just kidding” about deficit reduction would accomplish little other than
reaffirming to our creditors and the American taxpayer that Washington is not
serious about the debt. And any decision to intervene in Syria should be made on
the merits of that alone, not through horse-trading over budget
decisions.
After saying it on the Sunday shows, House Armed Service
Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) penned an editorial in the Wall Street
Journal setting out his arguments for his decision to condition his vote
for the use of American force in Syria on the repeal of the mandatory budget
cuts, commonly known as sequestration.
“Simply put, the blessings of
prosperity obligate the U.S. to enforce the peace it seeks,” says McKeon about his support, in theory, for
striking Syria in response to Bashar Assad's use of chemical weapons. However,
McKeon adds: “Americans should be uncomfortable with the notion of deploying a
depleted military to combat without a commitment on the part of the president
and Congress to restore its funding.”
What Chairman McKeon glosses over
is that the Pentagon received $527.5 billion for fiscal year 2013, plus an
additional $89.2 billion for overseas contingency operations. In 2021, at the
end of the Budget Control Act’s reign of budgetary terror, the Pentagon budget
will then be the same size it was in 2007, six years into a military buildup. No
one called it a hollowed out force then.
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio),
referring to civilians at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in his district who
were forced to take six unpaid days off this summer, says: “now the Department of Defense is telling
the American public that it has enough money to take us into this conflict in
Syria. How do you explain that to those people who lost wages?"
All of
this ignores the history of both the sequestration and emergency spending. While
Rep. McKeon and other members are happy to blame the Administration for slashing
military funding, everyone knows it takes two to tango. Congress – including
Chairman McKeon – voted for the Budget Control Act and the President signed it.
When it comes to covering the cost of any potential military action against
Syria, Congress has certainly demonstrated its willingness to pass emergency
supplemental spending bills when it sees fit. The $50.5 billion bill in
response to Super Storm Sandy is a good example (which
included billions for various goodies unrelated to actual storm damage,
incidentally).
Let’s face it. The budgetary pain from sequestration and
the budget caps imposed by sequestration is real. Because that’s the way
policymakers intended it to be. It was supposed to be so awful, so painful that
lawmakers would find $1.2 trillion of deficit reduction elsewhere. It turns out
that for policymakers the only thing worse than meat axe budget cuts, is making
tough decisions about where to cut.
The problem is that no one wants to
see their priorities suffer during the belt-tightening Congress has imposed in
response to public pressure over our spiraling national debt, which goes a long
way in explaining how we got here in the first place. It’s understandable for
everyday citizens to resist cutting spending or eliminating tax breaks that
affect them personally, but members of Congress are elected to lead. From tax
reform to foreign policy, almost everyone agrees we are spending too much
compared to what we are taking in, yet compromise on spending and revenue
remains a bridge too far for Congress. Their unwillingness to make tough choices
has left us with the so-called “meat-cleaver” approach to budgeting in the form
of sequestration.
If nothing else, the current debate about Syria shows
how these budgetary problems hang over everything Congress does, and until the
parties find a way to get beyond this state of perpetual fiscal brinksmanship,
we are in for more of the same, whatever the issue may be.
Quote of the Week“The crop insurance program is terrible budget policy. It’s the kind of congressional back-scratching that got us into our debt and deficit situation.”
- Rep. William Frenzel, a 10-term Republican congressman from Minnesota who served on the House Budget Committee and now analyzes fiscal issues at the Brookings Institution (Bloomberg)
http://www.taxpayer.net/library/weekly-wastebasket/article/syria-excuse-535-to-not-cut-the-deficit
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