Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 14, 1994 TAG: 9407140089
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The reason isn't simply that international instability remains and is growing, which it surely is.
America could decide any day to intervene in Haiti or Korea or Bosnia or any number of other places. Russians retain their nuclear missiles. The need for a strong national defense is as clear and compelling as ever. But no one on the nasty globe comes anywhere close to being as powerful as the Soviets and Warsaw Pact were.
No, U.S. defense spending remains as high as it is in part because of the military's domestic economic impact. Defense has come to be regarded, unfortunately, as a jobs program.
Consider that, earlier this year, the House of Representatives overrode its own Armed Services committee when it voted on C-17 military cargo planes. The committee had recommended building four. The House decided to buy six, at $534 million each.
The reason for the vote had little to do with national defense. In a letter to Congress members, President Clinton warned that not building the two extra planes would "cause at least 8,000 layoffs over the next two years." And this is just one (albeit expensive) example of a vast pork-barrel enterprise sustained by politics and a $260 billion Pentagon budget.
According to a recent report, Congress appropriated $28.7 billion between 1990 and 1993 for military programs that the Pentagon didn't even ask for, didn't want, didn't need. Why?
The Pentagon's own inspector general has cited $1.4 billion in questionable spending on construction projects. Yet members of Congress - most of them self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives - vote for these projects every year because they send money and jobs to their districts.
The defense budget is full of Cold War relics, conceived and designed to defeat Soviet weapons, many of which will never be built. The Seawolf submarine, for example, was designed to counter Soviet submarines under the polar icecap. The Seawolf costs $4.3 billion each, yet still has supporters.
What a waste. Clinton's five-year military spending plan amounts to $1.3 trillion, a good chunk of which represents an enormous diversion of resources from pressing needs.
Cold War weapons and programs have taken on a life of their own. It is wrong to keep them immune from sensible budget priorities. If Congress were serious about reducing the deficit, it would consult a study by its own Congressional Budget Office, which includes excellent options for cutting excessive military spending. One of the options: Cancel the C-17 cargo-plane program outright, and buy civilian aircraft instead.
America can have the world's most powerful military, by a huge margin, and still save billions - if Clinton and Congress would only regard the military as an instrument of national defense instead of job-creation.
by CNB