This release came out a little while ago from Lindsey Graham:
Graham to Oppose Debt-Limit Compromise
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today said he will oppose the compromise debt-limit agreement negotiated between congressional leaders and President Obama.
Graham said:
“I cannot in good conscience support this deal. Simply stated, it locks us into more debt, bigger government and most devastating of all, a weakened defense infrastructure at a time when we face growing threats.
“This agreement adds over $7 trillion in new debt over the next decade and only makes small reductions in future spending. We hardly address the future growth of entitlements, a major contributor of future budgetary problems. Instead of our nation running toward bankruptcy we will be walking toward bankruptcy.
“If fully implemented, the consequences to our nation’s defense infrastructure would be severe. And these deep cuts would come at a time when threats to our nation are increasing, not declining. What has happened to the Party of Reagan who viewed the primary purpose of the federal government was to provide a strong national defense?
“This agreement legitimizes the concept that defense spending is not only equal to other areas of federal spending, but is of lesser importance. This is a philosophical shift I will have no part of.
“I fear this agreement will destroy our nation’s defense infrastructure at a time when we need them the most. The only part of our nation’s budget which is really exposed to serious consequences under this compromise is the Department of Defense.
“I have always believed we have to raise our nation’s debt-ceiling but it should be done in a responsible manner. I support raising the debt-ceiling for a period of nine months, the historical average since 1940, accompanied by a dollar-to-dollar spending cuts to debt-ceiling increase. In effect, this basically is the first portion of the Boehner-Reid proposal.”
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And it got me to thinking…
Almost by definition, almost any deal at this point that both raises the debt ceiling and addresses the deficit (which must happen to avoid a devastating credit downgrade) will contain elements that do things no intelligent person would want to do.
Such as, as the senator mentions, eviscerating our defense infrastructure.
And yet we have to go ahead and make a bad deal anyway, because we’re out of time to make a good one that would benefit the country.
Helluva situation, isn’t it? For an explanation of how we got here, watch this. Yes, it’s silly, but anything that explained this would be.
The Tea Party might be right about one thing. It may be time for a revolution. Because this whole thing just isn’t working, and hasn’t for a while.
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Oh, and just in case you think that I’m the only one watching this who seems consumed with the absurdity of it, I recently started following Meredith Shiner of Roll Call, who filed this report last night on the deal.
That’s what she did for work. Revealing the state of her mind as all this goes on, here is something she posted on Twitter this morning:
“Very excited to go to work today so I can flit about with the clack-clack-clacking of my heels on the marble driving Capitol buzz.”
Under the circumstances, I find that just as relevant and rewarding to focus upon.
Our military budget is 10 times the size of the next 10 countries combined. Take a look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
This probably does’nt include Iraq and Afghan actions, and probably some other activities we don’t discuss.
Welcome to the club.
The federal government is like a drug addict when it comes to spending. Now the Democrats are suggesting shooting up heroin instead of doing coke while the Republicans are saying “switch to meth, it’s cheaper”. The compromise in that case is to switch to a little less heroin and a little less meth. That’s how the government compromises. Take the worst of both sides.
What we need is an intervention and going cold turkey.
Well, my math was wrong. We are bigger than the next 22 countries combined.
Tim, such numbers are meaningless. There aren’t 22 countries in the world, or 10, or even five, with any sort of global military capability. Nor would I want there to be.
Aside from us, there’s China, Russia and the Brits. And the Brits are cutting way, way back. Not only does Britannia not rule the waves, you can hardly find her on the waves.
Oh, and did I mention? While they were cutting back, THEY ALSO RAISED TAXES! The Tories, I mean. You know, the real conservatives. Did I mention that?
I wrote that off the top of my head, without looking at your link. I see if you measure by expenditure — which is not necessarily the best way to measure readiness or effectiveness, but at least it provides a measurement for the measurement-inclined — you must throw France and Japan into the mix.
And then, ze Germans come in right behind the Brits. But the number to notice there is that Germany isn’t even trying, only spending 1.4 percent of GDP.
You want to get on somebody for defense spending, pick on the Eritreans — 20.9 percent of GDP!
The problem with our massive, excessive military power is that when there isn’t an enemy to fight, we have to create one.
I mean if peace was the objective, our method shouldn’t be fighting more wars.
My point is that we are planning military spending not for credible threats, but incredible threats.
Debt Visualization:
http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us/
“If fully implemented, the consequences to our nation’s defense infrastructure would be severe. And these deep cuts would come at a time when threats to our nation are increasing, not declining. What has happened to the Party of Reagan who viewed the primary purpose of the federal government was to provide a strong national defense?
-Lindsey Graham
Let me tell you something Senator Graham. Ronald Reagan had the mighty Soviet Union to deal with. All we have are a bunch of rable rousing terrorists who live in ramshackle houses watching videos of themselves on cable tv. Your party has pushed this phony debt crisis to the fore so now it’s time to see what cuts are all about. Frankly I wouldn’t have made big cuts to any programs, even the wasteful military, during this time of high umemployment but if cuts must be made THAT is EXACTLY the place to start.
Lindsey, you and your war-mongering buddys, like Brad Warthen, have gotten us into this mess so don’t whine and moan about the pooooor military with all it’s worthless weapons that are only useful against a huge super power. If we can’t defeat Al Qaeda with a budget equal to 22 times the next largest military budgets combined then maybe it’s time we relinquished our status as super power. It’s a sad commentary when a powerful senator throws out this fear mongering during a time when his own party led us down this self-destructive path. Just look in the mirror senator and that’s who you should point the finger at. Better yet raise that finger in a middle finger salute and that expresses my sentiment for your assinine comments.
I’m not going to go into a discussion of why the world is a more dangerous place today than it was in the simple days of the Cold War (at least, than the latter days of the Cold War — things were pretty warm in 1962). Because you know what? That’s not my point.
Y’all are so opposed to our military and what it does in the world that you’re missing that point completely.
My point is that, in a hurry like this, HUGE things such as the defense budget can get royally screwed up.
Including stuff that YOU might think would be important. Whatever that might be.
Upon reflection it is clear who the real culprit is in this ongoing debacle. It’s the American voters. Hopefully some of the tea party supporters have buyers remorse.
Brad,
Sorry to have poked your sacred cow. Hence the defensiveness regarding the folks who posted as being “opposed the the Military”. I have a dear nephew training at Fort Hood to head back to Iraq. I want him to have the best that there is. That said, you can’t be serious looking at what we spend on defense and say “move along, nothing to see here”. From what I have read, military brass doesn’t even want much of what is shoved down its throat by defense contractors via congress. And You brought it up, rather than Social Security or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the National Parks Service or the Department of State, or anything else. I have watched enough legislative deliberation close up to know that there really isn’t any other way this was going to happen other than an 11th hour arm-wrestling match. Oh, and I think that the military and the supporting corporations have ample lobbying support to protect their interests.
Tim, no offense intended, none taken.
I don’t think any portion of our national budget is a “move along, nothing to see here” situation. Let’s look at it. Let’s go through it line by line. (Or rather, SOMEBODY go through it line by line. I’d as soon have a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.) But that’s not the way we generally discuss it here. It’s not about “How can we save money and get the job done?” Usually, it’s about defining the job, and there is a broad and deep chasm between those of us who think the US being a global cop is a good idea (just to grossly oversimplify it), and those who want to abandon the world entirely, go to a sort of Patrick Buchanan/Ron Paul isolationism, and use what remains of the military (I’m sort of picturing a cadre of citizen-soldiers armed with flintlocks, or at best M1s) to patrol the border with Mexico.
This reductionist notion that the military only exists, or only should exist, within the context of facing a monolithic, existential threat to the nation — presumably one that we can SEE at the moment, not a hypothetical one — has never been consistent with reality.
Even in the nation’s infancy, the father of all today’s small-government libertarians, Thomas Jefferson, had to come to grips with the fact that we needed something more in the way of military forces than militia, and that we needed it for purposes other than to hold Britain or France at bay. Jefferson’s party had not wanted a Navy, but he found it came in handy in stopping the Barbary Pirates — not a conventional, national, declaration-of-war sort of foe at all, but a lower-intensity threat to our legitimate interests.
This has ALWAYS been the case, and the growth of this nation into the globe’s greatest economic powerhouse in world more interconnected than Jefferson could have dreamed of, and the nation that, since 1945, has been the world’s chief bulwark against totalitarianism and oppression, whether on the large (USSR) or small (Somalia warlords) scale…
But dang it, I wasn’t going to digress. I was going to say, study the line items in the defense budget all you like, but that is NOT what we’re doing in rushing through this deal today. That’s not what we’re doing with ANYthing. This brinksmanship — a Cold War word, by the way — is brought to us by the unceasing, mutually delegitimizing, political warfare between our two major parties, which have guaranteed that we had this crisis rather than a coherent deliberative process.
In a world where the perceived military threat to the U.S. is a nail, we have a garage full of power drills.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the United States is responsible for the rest of the world’s security.
Our military exists as a means to transfer tax dollars to large defense corporations. It’s monolithic and steeped more in tradition than common sense. And for all our supposed power, we can’t seem to defeat a bunch of undisciplined morons driving around in old Toyota trucks.
Brad,
Again, I am not opposed to the military, but you and I both know that this was never going to be a nice, clean gentlemenly discussion about budgets and debt ceilings. It was going to be a bloody brawl, with collateral damage. That’s the way all big fights are. The details will have to emerge later. In fact, what they are doing is essentially using the military base closing model as a way to proceed. No matter what, DARPA will keep inventing new gizmos to be built in congressmen’s districts and then cancelled; and many of our WWII-Soviet era military institutions will plug merrily along.
BTW, this is an interesting article.
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/07/18/special-report-dods-budget-quandary/
Thanks for the link, Tim. But I would not defend this mess by comparing it to BRAC. BRAC is a FAR more deliberative process than this. Very orderly, very systematic, very much based upon actualities rather than shouting…
I was just thinking about BRAC today, because Burnie Maybank was talking about it at Rotary.
He was talking about how TRAC was based on BRAC, and pointing out that at least with BRAC, Congress was admitting that it needed help, and actually went ahead and approved every BRAC report.
Unfortunately, the SC Legislature is not so willing to admit its failures, and has refused to take up the Tax Realignment Commission recommendations…