Defense Budget Gimmicks Ignore Realities
In the weeks ahead, Congress will take up the budget resolution and will be dealing with defense authorization and appropriations.
Already we have seen the administration unveil a defense budget that is not only unrealistic, but actually could be dangerous. It keeps spending for nuclear modernization on track at over $3 billion. It includes funding for a long-range, standoff replacement cruise missile, costing $2.2 billion in the future years defense program. This ultimately will cost $20 to $30 billion, if not more. This is merely to replace a cruise missile that the father of this device, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, feels is no longer relevant and has argued against.
There are billions of dollars for the controversial modernization of each leg of the nuclear triad — land-based missiles, submarine-based missiles, and bombers — which have not been used in 65 years. These weapon systems have been unable to help us address the military challenges that we face now in the Middle East and will consume huge sums of money in this hopelessly redundant program.
The defense budget is also dangerous because of the spending reductions in the nuclear nonproliferation programs of more than $130 million. These cuts pose real threats to our security. We are battling ISIS now. They have already obtained some low-grade nuclear material in a facility near Mosul. We have also seen reports of nuclear weapons going missing and other nuclear materials unaccounted for or stolen.
We need to have these proven nonproliferation programs to reduce the inventory, track nuclear materials down, and take them out of circulation. We should be expanding these programs, not cutting them back.
The proposed budget continues a trend that results in a trillion dollars in spending on the nuclear modernization programs over the course of the next 30 years. Now, these are resources that will be at the expense of our conventional weapons. As I mentioned, the nuclear triad is already far more than we need to deter anybody in the world right now and do not help us with the strategic challenges that we face today. A stronger nuclear program is not going to prevent Russian adventurism in Ukraine or Crimea, but it will result in our having to cannibalize the Guard and Ready Reserve, and the Army will also be paying the price for this.
These are conventional forces that have borne the burden for the last two decades of activities and are going to be needed for both deterrence and, God forbid, further activity in the future. We cannot do all of this within the current budget horizon.
The budget gimmicks ignore this fact. We have a little trust fund, the overseas contingency account, that ignores budget realities that we are not going to be able to continue in perpetuity. We ignore the long-term costs of budget programs for weapons, preferring to put that off for a future administration and future Congresses. In so doing, we are playing fast and loose with the integrity of the Pentagon, with the resources and the materials that are necessary to support our troops now and in the future.
It is not too late for this Congress to demand a spending plan, cost accountability, kill the new cruise missile program, and put us on a path of fiscal stability and sanity, while we have appropriate priorities for the military strength and defense of our country.
