The New York Times Editorial On Pentagon Cuts

I've been submerged under e-mails on the so-called cuts to the Pentagon budget, which warn that the Navy will be cut back to the days of WWI. We have Republican candidates running on the need to increase the Pentagon spending or else we will be made defenseless. Even though Republicans voluntarily put the Pentagon on the chopping block for the Deficit Commitee, almost all of them are scrambling around to stop the automatic cuts called for now that the budget process has failed.

The New York Times enters the fray with an editorial entitled "A Pentagon the Country Can Afford". The Times argues that the Pentagon has had a blank check for most of the last decade. Last year's basic budget of $530 billion (not counting the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) was about $140 billion higher, in inflation-adjusted terms, than in 2001. This year's base budget is expected to be about $526 billion, which is still excessive.

The New York Times does not include a discussion of what I call the military/intelligence/ terrorist complex, whose annual budget scattered through various departments tops $1 trillion a year. But since nearly $500 billion in cuts are supposed to start in January 2013, the budget that created the supercommittee mandated an initial cut of roughly $450 billion in defense spending, spread over the next decade. This would basically put the defense budget at its level in 2007.

In Washington, there is a widespread perception that a decade of war has decimated our arsenal so that the Pentagon simply can't handle cuts right now. Weirdly, the Pentagon has made no contingency plans to create a strategy for these cuts, instead waiting to be rescued by either an incoming administration or the Congress. But the Henry L.Stimson Center led by a George W. Bush official calculated that the Pentagon spent $1 trillion on procurement during the last decade--a 97 percent increase from 2000 to 2010--and was able to modernize and improve equipment across the board.

The Times argues that making cuts of the size ordered by the law will not be easy. But they think one should reduce the cost of personnel and benefits. With the wars winding down, the Army can be cut to 520,000 from its current 569,000 and to some degree the Navy and Air Force. Currently, the military's health insurance program Tricare costs the taxpayer $50 billion a year and the costs will rise. But the Times advocates raising by $50 per month the premium for those employed. Currently, I know of retired military personnel with large pensions, defense contracts and other jobs getting Tricare coverage for themselves and their spouse at about $400 per year. The same people always complain to me that Obamacare is socialized medicine. I always remark I want Tricare for everyone. The Times suggestion would save $20 billion annually.

The Times suggests cutting the Pentagon civilian work force by 10% or 74,000 and retiring old planes for about $13 billion a year. They also urge closing some of several hundred bases abroad. They also target nuclear-relation programs that now cost upwards of $600 billion for a decade. And they also want to end cold war systems that are no longer suited for the 21st century.

They warned that even though President Obama and former Defense Secretary Gates began to enforce fiscal discipline two years ago, the entire culture and procedure for procurement needs to change.

But the Times ends with the stunning fact that even after all the sequester cuts, which I do not believe will happen, the United States will have a defense budget the equivalent of China, Russia, Britain, France, Japan and Germany combined. That something to contemplate. The only way to get a grip on defense spending is to actually rethink the national strategy and also realize that we have hollowed out the armed forces not because of equipment but by the effect of continued warfare on our men and women in uniform.