With the deficit "soaring" to $1.4 trillion, the question is: when are we going to have a sensible, realistic defense budget? Two-thirds of its present size or less? What would cutting the fat out of defense do to reduce our current deficit?
The defense budget doesn't get mention in today's WaPo article lamenting the high deficit. Of course, the implication is that health care, job creation, energy efficiency -- frills, in short -- are simply unaffordable.
The overall debt of the US government is not very high by historical standards or by comparative standards. It's much lower than in comparable countries in Europe. This $1 trillion deficit is a somewhat artificial number. It comes from the fact that the asset-repurchase program of the Paulson bailout bill is being counted as a deficit. But in fact it's basically a financial transaction, an exchange of assets. If the Federal Reserve were doing it rather than the Treasury -- which from a technical point of view would be perfectly possible -- it wouldn't be counted as part of a deficit at all. So no, I think the time is not now to worry about or to be sidetracked by concerns about big numbers on the federal balance sheet. In order to do the job that's necessary, this is a moment when the federal government is going to have to take action. ... James K. Galbraith
The Washington Post is looking in all the wrong places. It should be asking whether we can afford to allow Wall Street banks to continue doing what they do on our nickel. The media should focus on money sucked out of the budget by the defense industry -- unnecessary weaponry or pure pork -- or whether we can allow corporations to continue with a tax structure which favors them so heavily.
The frame of the deficit argument always puts spending on social programs in the hot seat. Corrupt lending practices, unleashed derivatives trading, private military contractors, and bank bailouts seem to get a pass. Spending now so we don't have to spend a lot more later doesn't attract much interest.
Check out WaPo's latest:
Congress is enmeshed in a deeply partisan battle over Obama's plan to overhaul the nation's health-care system, which would add billions of dollars to the federal budget, if not future deficits.
No mention of the billions we'll save as a result of health care reform. Those savings, after all, the key factor in the White House's health care overhaul efforts.
Democrats also are considering extending safety-net programs for the unemployed, funding new job-creation strategies to combat a 9.8 percent unemployment rate and cutting seniors another round of $250 checks to make up for the government's decision to withhold cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.
And what happens when seniors get bonuses in lieu of normal social security raises? They spend them. What happens when people get jobs? Tax revenues increase.
But it takes a "left-leaning" economist to get those points across.
"In the short term the deficit is not our primary problem," said Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "The unemployment rate is near 10 percent, and the key thing is to get the economy growing, which will increase tax revenues. But in the long term we do need to think about the deficit problem and do something about it."
Short of doing what we should have done starting in 1960 -- putting defense expenditures on an extreme diet -- the Obama administration is doing everything that needs to be done to get the economy back on its feet and trim the deficit. Now, if the Washington Post wants to play a useful role in that process, an honest and unrelenting examination of pork in Congress and profiteering in corporate America would be a useful start.
___
Steve Benen has the final word on this. Not that either the Washington Post or the rest of the fact-challenged right will take it to heart. We have a hugely obese welfare queen called "defense spending" spreading her haunches all over federal budget. Going to have to shove her aside to set things right.
