Pass the Ladle

Obscene Spending on the Military

In early 1993, just after the Clinton administration had entered the White House, I, as the new head of national security budgets in the White House budget office, walked across West Executive Ave. to the West Wing with OMB director Leon Panetta, my new boss.

We were excited and not a little bit nervous. We were on our way to brief the new president and vice-president on the defense budget proposal we though he should send to the Congress.

It was early days. The outgoing Bush administration had not left a budget proposal behind, so we had nothing to amend, So we had missed the February deadline to send a new request to the Congress. Cabinet heads had been confirmed by the Senate, but basically nobody else with policy authority was at work in the agencies, including the Defense Department, so nobody with authority was working on a new budget at the Pentagon.

To control the process and make sure overall White House budget priorities were up front, the White House decided that the budget request would be put together by its own office – the Office of Management and Budget – not by the agencies. The request would set the totals for each agency, with the details to come.

My wonderful staff of 60 and I put the new defense budget proposal together.

Two things focused us. First, the Cold War was over. Bush’s departing defense folks had already cut the forces and their budgets significantly. And there were ceilings on spending for the whole federal government, ceilings set out in the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act in 1990, that our proposal had to meet.

We proposed lowering the defense budget further, cutting something like $125 billion over the next four years below what the Bush budget would have been if you had just let it grow by the rate of projected inflation.

Leon and I walked into the Roosevelt Room. Around the table sat the new national Economic Council, whose meetings teed up decisions for every agency’s budget total. They were the advisers, the White House power brokers for these decisions. Robert Rubin, the new head of the NEC sat between President Clinton and Vice-President Gore, who would make the final calls.

The Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, sat against the wall; he was not a member of the NEC and had argued his way into the meeting. He had brought two staff people. One of them eagerly gripped a set of briefing slides, prepared to show why the Defense Department needed significantly more money.

Rubin opened the meeting. Aspin jumped in to say Defense was prepared to brief on their needs. Rubin immediately said this was an NEC meeting and the briefing would be done by OMB, who were in charge of the planning process. Leon turned to me.

As I presented my ten or so slides on the totals for defense, I could almost smell the smoke rising from Aspin’s ears. I could see the red faces of his staffers, both of whom were friends I had known in my previous role as a think tank director. Here I was, proposing to cut their budget. In their faces. With the authority of the NEC behind me. To the President and Vice-President.

When I was done, Clinton and Gore asked a few questions; next to nothing came from the other NEC members. Clinton tapped the table and said “Good. Accepted. Let’s move on.”

For the next eight years, we held the line. The country didn’t get into big trouble. Bosnia was the biggest use of US forces and they did just fine. Between the Bush four years and Clinton’s eight, the nation and its military managed one of the most successful drawdowns of force in our history since 1945. It was the force the next President Bush used in 2003 to take down Iraq’s military in short order with extremely low casualties.

And the Secretary of Defense hated my guts; wouldn’t speak to me for a year. And lost his job when the Somalia expedition went up in smoke in 1993.

We managed to cut the defense budget and the uniforms saluted and executed successfully.

So I look at today’s fracas over the defense budget with, let’s face it, shock.

In the early years of Clinton, I was overseeing defense spending well below $300 billion. We thought that was a lot and perfectly adequate to secure the country. Even if one accounts for inflation, that’s about $600 billion in today’s dollars.

Hell, if this administration gets away with the $1.5 TRILLION it wants for next year, the Pentagon will pocket nearly three times as much money. Gives obscenity new meaning.

Today there is only pitifully weak opposition to this grotesque sum of money. Republicans supinely line up in support of the waste-to-come. Even many Democrats trip over themselves in a rush to show that they too support what is too often called a “strong defense.”

It seems more money is meant to pay for a force which has not won a major war since 1945 except for Bush I’s Iraq exercise in 1991 and failed utterly in the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, and now in the air war on Iran (which is hardly a major war).

The Trump regime and the Congress are ladling out the cash with no detailed spending plans to speak of. Just another example of the shocking corruption afoot in this administration while social support functions – SNAP benefits, health funds, education support - are being cut to ribbons, throwing tens of thousands of Americans off food and medical support.

My experience says this devastating waste will go on for a while. It seems only two things lead to discipline in defense spending.

First, when a war actually ends – Republicans and Democrats alike agree to reducing the size of the force – World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Second, when Congress suddenly wakes up and recognizes that all spending, including defense, needs to be capped because the deficit is out of control – Gramm-Rudman-Hollings in the 1985s, the Budget Control Act of 1990 and the Budget Enforcement Act of 2011.

Everything needed to be capped, defense and non-defense, to get an agreement on budget discipline through the Congress with bipartisan support.

We had both things going for us in 1993; neither exists today.

So fasten your seat belts and get out your umbrellas. It’s gonna rain money on defense contractors for a while.