The video above contains most of what Lindsey Graham had to say yesterday at the press conference at which he, Joe Wilson, Steve Benjamin, Bobby Harrell and Rich Eckstrom all decried the looming “sequestration” of the defense budget.
I didn’t get the video up and running at the start of Graham’s remarks, so here are some excerpts from what he said before that:
- “As a Republican, I was very disappointed that my party leadership would put the Defense Department in such a bad spot.”
- “If politicians can’t come up with a way to reduce spending in a responsible manner, fire us; don’t fire the soldiers. It’s the one thing that seems to be working at the federal level is the military. So we’ve come up with this hare-brained idea that if we can’t do our job, the penalty to be paid is by those who’ve been doing their job very well. I don’t know if you can print this, but I’ll say it: That’s ass-backwards.”
- “What does it mean to cut a trillion dollars out of the Defense Department budget over the next decade? [the sequestration plus $400 billion in cuts being sought outside that] It means you have the smallest Army since 1940, the smallest Navy since 1915 — 231 ships — the smallest Air Force in history.”
After that, it’s pretty much all on the video. Sorry about the crudity of the clip — I was unable to edit it because I shot it on my iPhone, and don’t have software for editing that on my PC.
Bottom line, the message was that the nation shouldn’t dramatically weaken our defense just because members of Congress couldn’t do their job. Half of the $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts, resulting from the failure of last year’s supercommittee (which was a mere microcosm of the overall failure of Congress), are set to come from the Defense budget — $600 billion. And they would not be targeted — no eliminating $300 hammers and preserving pay for soldiers. “These are blind, across-the-board cuts.”
He kept hitting the point that one part of the government that’s doing its job — the military — shouldn’t get eviscerated because Congress isn’t doing its job at all.
Perhaps fitting given the setting and the presence of Mayor Benjamin, Graham’s tone was decidedly nonpartisan. For instance, he challenged Mitt Romney to put forward a plan for achieving the cuts without hollowing out the military.
I’ve got video of the other speakers as well, and can provide on request. But they said much the same things he said. His presentation was just more complete.
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So we aren’t supposed to fire the soldiers, but other government functions are expendable? Of course the importance to the local economy of Fort Jackson (etc.) is huge, but if we don’t need soldiers, shouldn’t we spend the money on infrastructure or other pressing needs? Basic science research? (ha. ha.)
If we need the soldiers, then of course we shouldn’t cut them, but aren’t we winding down the Bush wars?
What is it about across-the-board budget cuts they don’t understand?
True, Graham deserves some credit for not pinning this on one party and for being willing to criticize his own party. But it’s disingenuous of him to suggest that the cause of the “sequestration” is merely the inability of Congress to “come up with a way to reduce spending in a responsible manner.” It’s also about the vise-like grip of the Norquistian tax-cutters in which Graham’s party is now tightly held.
Though I think he was comparing Congress to the military, I’m not too comfortable with the statement that the military is the “one thing that is working at the federal level.”
Republicans like to criticize Keynesian economists who say “stimulus during recession, cutbacks for debt reduction during the boom times” because they accuse, with some justification, liberals of never being willing to cut domestic programs EVEN during the boom times, resulting in ever larger government growth. Well, it’s the same with the GOP and the military: Graham talks a good game about responsible cost-cutting in the military, but without enforced across-the-board cuts, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Bottom line in my opinion: the cuts should not nearly as large as they are, but a significant across-the-board cut in defense spending is a good thing. Also, in his op-ed in the State, Graham said this is a time when threats to America are growing, not diminishing. I wonder whether he would be willing/able to identify ANY period in American history when he thought threats to America were NOT growing. Make no mistake, Graham will never support ANY real cut in defense spending.
Bottom line in my opinion: the cuts should not nearly as large as they are, …
– Phillip
I agree with every other word Phillip wrote but this. We’re only talking about $60 billion/year in military cuts. Given the wind down of the wars that really doesn’t seem like much.
As for Grahams comment about the fewest ships since 1915, seriously that seems about right given the threats we faced during the interceeding 97 years. There just isn’t a tenable naval threat to our security right now.
The real threat to our security will come in the form of energy depletion and global warming. We should be spending money in addressing those two needs, not defending against a phantom naval threat from Iran.
The idea that “the one thing that seems to be working well at the federal level is the military” is very unfortunate political hyperbole. Even if one lacks any personal enthusiasm for functions like Medicare and the National Park system, they are well managed on the whole (for example, Medicare administration costs far less than private insurance administration) and they provide important services to the citizens of our country. I would have greater respect for an argument that did not rely upon inaccurate hyperbole. If Sen. Graham does not believe that our federal government should do much other than fighting wars, which seems to be the position of many in his party, he should just say so.
It has nothing to do with defense. It has to do with de-money. As in: how do we keep all those government dollars flowing into South Carolina bases.
There is no greater threat today than there was ten years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago. We have more military power than we could (or should) ever use. The defense contractors in the D.C. area invent reasons to grab tax dollars and buy off the politicians to make it happen.
How much money has been contributed to Lindsey Graham by defense contractors?
@Lynn
Medicare administration is efficient??? Seriously – if the cost of administration is so low, maybe that’s why the amount of Medicare fraud is so high. Even Obama was saying back in 2008 that the fraud was in the 100’s of billions of dollars. That’s more than the defense cuts.
It is estimated that in the Miami area alone, there is $1 billion in Medicare fraud per year.
If that’s working, I hope they go out of business.
Even though we all benefit from our local bases, let’s not forget that bases are expensive, and can be redundant and obsolescent.
While Graham is on point about the politics – what an epic fail to kick the can down the road to just past the election – defending our bases just because they are “ours” is just as parochial and short-sighted. Of course, if we don’t defend them, who will?
It’s clear that the military is going to shrink. That’s just a fact. Every aspect of the structure will see reductions. Let’s remember that it’s important to defend our bases, but only to the point that they make sense for the country. Bases are bureaucracy, too, as much as they are infrastructure.
Given the poor jobs report that just came out from the Bureau of Labor statistics do we really need to cut anything right now? With a drop of 15,000 government jobs spending should be increased at the federal level to supplement private sector job growth. Otherwise we are likely to enter another recession. The president will get the blame for this but the real culprits are the austerity zealots in congress.
@ bud – I don’t think this was a cut to the OCO funding stream that was being used to pay for the war. That was already planned to go away in the outyears. I think this cut is in the Pentagon’s baseline budget. The baseline budget pays for salaries, benefits, aquisitions, maintenance, etc.
The war’s been very hard on people and equipment (I know, right?) and so there are a lot of costs associated with getting the DoD reset – training soldiers, repairing or replacing damaged equipment, catching up on maintenance needs, etc.
@bud
How many trillion dollars more of borrowed money do you think it will take to fix the economy?
I have an idea – let’s just announce a raise of 100% for everyone. And let’s pass a law that no company can ever lay off an employee no matter what their bottom line looks like. That should fix everything.
@bud
Can you identify by what percentage federal government spending has been cut by “austerity zealots”? Weren’t you recently championing the news that Obama had cut GROWTH RATE (not spending)? So was that a bad thing that Obama is taking credit for?
The can will be kicked further down the road. If Obama wins re-election, the economy will sputter along. If Romney wins, economic growth MAY show significant improvement, but it’s a lead-pipe cinch that the national debt will keep growing.As long as the GOP holds to Grover Norquist’s Mau Mau oath, spending will continue to go up, not down.
Doug, I guess it depends on how you measure efficiency when you compare medicare to private sector insurance. Given the huge profit margins and corporate bueracracy used by the insurance companies to deny coverage it is certainly true that for each dollar paid into premiums only about 65% ever ends up as actual care. For medicare it’s probably higher even if fraud is taken into account. Besides if fraud is based on someone getting care when they otherwise wouldn’t have, for example for someone under age 65, then that’s not an inefficiency at all. It’s just someone beating the system. Not sure I’d even count that as a problem. If you mean doctors getting paid for services not rendered then that’s a problem. But doesn’t that occur in the private sector as well? All in all I’m sure medicare provides a greater amount of health care per dollar than does the private sector.
The bond market is terrified of Europe right now, and that’s a big present to the US taxpayer, or at least to the US Treasury. US 10 year notes are under 1.5% and US 30 year bonds are at 2.55% We should be refinancing while the getting’s good.
If we were smart we’d be cranking out as many 30’s as the market could stand, and who knows? Maybe we already are. We should look at issuing some 50 year “Methuselah” bonds while rates are so low.
@Doug — Politifact has examined estimates of Medicare fraud and found most of them based on doubtful assumptions. Most are based simply on the assumption that fraud is at least as common in Medicare as it is in the private insurance sector. The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, which includes private sector as well as government agency insurers, estimates $68 billion/year in fraud for all health insurance providers, including private. Basically there appear to be no reliable numbers, but even if one assumes Medicare fraud at a much higher rate than for private insurers, we are not talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. In comparison, Abbott Analytics, in a study of Dept. of Defense disbursements, notes that cell phone fraud alone in this country is demonstrably (unlike any reliable estimates of Medicare fraud) in the hundreds of millions of dollars every year. We certainly would like to see less fraud in Medicare, but cutting agency personnel (which Graham seems to favor) is scarcely the way to better investigate and control fraud.
All of this is before we get to the question of whether the Dept. of Defense makes fraudulent disbursements, a subset of the larger question of whether DoD wastes money. The Abbott Analytics study notes estimates of up to $300 billion annually in fraudulent disbursements from the DoD. A report to the Senate on DoD fraud (www.sanders.senate.gov) examined largely those cases in excess of $1,000,000 and only cases resulting in convictions, and even then the totals reached from $25-30 billion/year.
Again, I do not regard Sen. Graham’s statements as grounded in fact. The military is no more effective in achieving its mission than many other federal agencies and has a substantial problem with fraudulent disbursements that appears to be at least equal to that of other government agencies. Again, I argue that if the Senator simply believes that the military is a core function of government that deserves support, and these other agencies are not, he should say that, not indulge in political hyperbole that distorts reality. If he believes that all of government needs better fraud controls, that would be great — he should work to fund that.
Silence points out something that Paul Krugman has been saying for a long time. Interest rates and inflation are just NOT a problem right now. Lack of jobs IS. So why not borrow and spend. Or perhaps tax the rich, borrow and spend even more. Why we allow the government sector to continue to be a drag on the economy is just beyond the pale.
The two political parties made a deal to try and cut the budget. They put these draconian spending cuts in for the military (and domestically) to hold their feet to the fire in case they didn’t reach an agreement.
Now, they didn’t reach a deal, and Congress is saying “Hey! Put out that fire, it’s going to burn our feet!”.
And people wonder why Congressional approval ratings are so low.
@ bud – the margins aren’t huge in the private insurance industry. They are pretty slim margins. You are just dealing with enormous sized organizations, so the actual quantity of profit is large – not the margin they earn.
Your local plumber (or any successful small business) makes many times the margin that Aetna or Kaiser makes.
Doug, I was only pointing out that claims by conservatives that the President is this huge spendthrift is simply not supported by facts. Given the deep recession he inherited it’s only natural to expect more spending. Frankly it hasn’t been enough and factually speaking it’s not even true (that he’s a big spender).
The tea party types in congress have blocked numerous attempts by Democrats to come up with a useful jobs bill and have even blocked the normally routine budget ceiling increase. That has undoubtable had a chilling effect on spending efforts for infrastructure, job training and perhaps even military procurement programs. Given todays BLS report showing a decline in government sector employment it’s pretty clear that spending has been dampened by austerity zealots. And it hasn’t been good for the economy.
@ Lynn T – “The military is no more effective in achieving its mission than many other federal agencies”
Yup, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, drug abuse, illegal immmigration and interstate crime have been pretty much eradicated.
Meanwhile, Noriega, Hussein, the Taliban, Qadaffi, Milošević, and Mladić are all still in power and thriving.
Sheesh. Politifact that!
Yep bud, and the country is so much better now than it was 4 years ago.
It’s difficult to spend when your credit and bank accounts run dry.
4 years ago we were already deep into the recession, lots of folks I know were losing jobs and houses and healthcare, we were in 2 wars with no end in sight, and the worst was to come that October.
The country is sure as shootin’ better than it was in September and October 2008. Or are some people forgetting what a real financial panic looked like?
Silence, lets not forget Bin-Laden.
Most of these so-called military successes were achieved by relatively small operations or the US acting in support of others. That’s hardly a good argument for a huge military budget. Frankly we’d probably be better off if Hussein was still in power. That’s the one really big spending operation on this list.
But lets look at the domestic side of things. Poverty and homelessness really have been reduced sharply since Johnson declared a war on poverty. Malnutrition for one really has been largely eradicated in this country. Kids just don’t starve in the U.S. anymore.
The government has also played a vital roll in healthcare by providing medicaid and child healthcare programs. It’s not nearly enough but it’s helped keep millions of people from dying.
Then look at the magnificent highway system we built in the 50s and 60s. Wouldn’t you call that a success story? Public education likewise has made it possible for millions to learn the skills they need to be successful.
Sadly we are now backing away from many of the programs that have worked. Kids are paying astronomical amounts of money to attend college compared to what their parents paid. Why? In large part because government support for colleges has declined.
As for crime, the murder rate in this country is much lower than it was in the 70s and 80s thanks in large part to government efforts. Safety on the highways is now better than ever. The number of traffic fatalities in the US was 32,885 in 2010. That was the lowest total since 1949 in spite of a 10 fold increase in traffic since then. That is the result of effective safety programs by both private and public entities that have made cars and highways safer while addressing driver issues such as drinking.
One especially bright spot in highway safety is at RR crossings. Once a huge problem traffic deaths resulting from train crashes have become a rarity.
Government programs are easy to ridicule and use as a scapegoat for all our problems. But the reality is very different from the Tea Party rhetoric. We can and should strive to make government more efficient and effective. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Or worse, throw the baby out and keep the bathwater! Unfortunately many folks like Lindsey Graham would have us do just that.
@Silence: if your point is that the military is indeed more successful at tackling problems than other areas of our federal government, for whatever reasons, would it not naturally follow that we should perhaps seriously consider turning over more areas of our governance to military oversight? Would we be better off with some type of transition to military rule, if our democracy seems unable to function or tackle problems effectively, or as effectively as the military? What are your thoughts?
@Phillip – there’s no way I’ll take that bait! The only additional governmental areas I could see the military improving are 1) NASA – which they arguably were highly involved in back when it was successful, and are again involved in with the new X37-B and 2) Border security/Homeland defense. A military is pretty much supposed to be for homeland defense. If it can’t/doesn’t do that, why have it? It’s even called the Department of DEFENSE, nowadays.
My point was that the military pretty much does exactly what it is told to do, and does it effectively. It might not be terribly efficient, that’s open for debate, but it is effective.
Saying that it’s less EFFECTIVE than other branches of government is just 100% incorrect.
Oh, it’s devastatingly effective. More so than any military in the history of the world, near as I can tell. At warfighting, I mean. Which is what it’s for.
You can see this most dramatically when it’s up against an INeffective force, like the militias in Somalia in 1993. Yes, we lost 18 men that day in Mogadishu. But U.S. forces killed about 1,000 Somalis. That’s a statistic not many people talk about, but it has a lot to do with why our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan have avoided stand-up-and-fight battles.
It’s not just our equipment, or the fact that we can afford so much of it. It’s the training.
I’ve mentioned before the book “On Killing,” by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. It tells about the revolutionary innovation introduced to the U.S. military after WWII: Soldiers were trained to aim straight and shoot at the enemy.
That may not sound like much of an innovation. Haven’t all armies taught that? No, not effectively.
Research by military historians and others, studying past battles — number of participants, weapons, ammunition expended and casualties — found out something remarkable. It had already been known that a surprisingly small numbers of soldiers actually fire their weapons in combat, but what was realized was that even most of those firing their weapons weren’t AIMING them at the enemy. It was common to respond to battlefield conditions by firing over the enemy’s head — a response essentially the same as other animals’ “threat displays.”
The reluctance to kill, even in trained soldiers, was stronger than had been thought.
So we started conditioning soldiers to quickly acquire targets — the men on the other side — and fire, accurately. By the Vietnam war, American soldiers were far deadlier than they had been in the past. To the extent that a soldier’s effectiveness is measured by his ability to kill the enemy, then given modern weapons and this training, that made the U.S. military the most effective ever. And by that cold calculus, it probably IS more effective than any other part of the government.
You just won’t hear politicians putting it that way.
Our military is very good at other things as well. We’re legendary for our logistics. Fighting insurgents has caused our people to learn things about diplomacy and winning hearts and minds that would have been handy to know in Southeast Asia.
And most of all, there is the great glory of our system: The U.S. military is fully subordinated to legitimate, constitutional authority.
I think I’m starting to digress. This happens when I have coffee late in the day.
Oh, just to complete the picture, one of the central themes of “On Killing” — if not the main theme — is the deep emotional and spiritual cost that soldiers pay for being so effective.
They see the enemy, and if the ROE permits, they aim and fire, and the enemy goes down. And they continue the mission, thanks to the “combat numbness” Jones wrote about in “The Thin Red Line,” and to their training which has kept them from feeling hesitation AT THE MOMENT.
But then, later, you get a lot more PTSD.
Achieving peace apparently is a very, very expensive proposition. And the more you spend, the further away you get from attaining it. Interesting paradox.
This is nothing outside the flow of history. For millenia men killed men in close combat.
Then along came first field artillery and then the heavy machine gun and men began to be killed by the tens of thousands in mass butcherous crossings of no mans’ land. So I don’t know, Sgt. York even stands out in WWI though as the Allies found how not to get so completely bogged down. But if I remember right, the Marines on Guadalcanal would never have pervailed if they couldn’t shoot straight, fast and without hesitation. And then there were those soldiers facing the Chinese hoards near the border of northern Korea.
Maybe the difference is that society (on a near global basis) has advanced beyond a naked kill-or-be-killed mentality and so the soldiers who must do that wartime killing are now less able to adjust to a changed civilization? Maybe it is we who have shifted, unmooring them and leaving them to suffer in a way that might have been less haunting in earlier centuries when people may have shrugged off smashing a broad axe through another’s helmet as just a normal event in a life of violence and domination/defeat.
Mark – I’d agree that western society at least has changed to a point where we are less accepting of death and killing. We are indoctrinated against violence from an early age, and shielded from a lot of the violence that occurs in the world around us.
@Mark”Maybe the difference is that society (on a near global basis) has advanced beyond a naked kill-or-be-killed mentality and so the soldiers who must do that wartime killing are now less able to adjust to a changed civilization? Maybe it is we who have shifted, unmooring them and leaving them to suffer in a way that might have been less haunting in earlier centuries when people may have shrugged off smashing a broad axe through another’s helmet as just a normal event in a life of violence and domination/defeat.”
Stunning thought, beautifully expressed…
A few thoughts…our military was at a pitiful low at the onset of WWII; it took a couple of years for us to catch up. (We should hate war, but what’s wrong with speaking softly and carrying a big stick?) At the end of WWII, when a lot of draftees came home, what did we do when they hit the job market? I remember the 50s as a period of sustained good economy. Will austerity in government strain the current economy as it puts people on the street? Will thousands of men and women coming home from military service strain the economy? What do you think of DeMint’s position of not giving veterans job preference. I wish the powers that be would use a little wisdom and a scapel instead of knee-jerk reaction and a hatchet,
(turned out to be stream of conscious – sorry, Brad)
@ Pat — The point is that the parties
had plenty of opportunity to work with a scalpel, and the response is hardly knee-jerk–it is a Doomsday machine set in motion because the parties, and by parties I mean the GOP, do not work and play well with others. Compromise is a dirty word in far Right Republican circles. Just ask Bob Inglis.
DeMint’s position “of not giving veterans job preference” is quite consistent with his personal attitude toward military service.
Brad’s fetish for everything military not withstanding it is apparent that our military may be very lethal but it is hardly particularly effective. We continue to fight wars for 5, 6, 7 or even 10 years and what do we have to show for it? Korea was a draw, Vietnam was a disaster, Afghanistan has become a quagmire. And in Iraq we have this:
BAGHDAD (AP) – A suicide bomber detonated an explosive-rigged car outside Iraq’s main religious affairs office for Shiite Muslims on Monday, shearing off the facade of the three-story building and killing at least 23 people in the deadliest single attack in the country in three months, officials said.
Bud, there you go again with your impossible standard for success in Iraq.
So if a guy — all it takes is one guy — decides to blow up himself and everyone around him, then it’s all a failure, huh? Well, that puts a tiny minority of terrorists in charge of the world, if that’s our standard.
Basically, then, this whole American experiment is just a bust, after the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, and all the incidents like those. We might as well not have passed the Declaration of Independence, because it’s all a failure if one guy decides to get violent.
Let me tell you something, Bud: There are going to continue to be people willing to blow themselves up to kill others in that part of the world. You’re going to see it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and on and on. It’s going to happen. And that doesn’t render efforts to stop such things from happening a bust.
Brad seriously you are incredibly thick on this. Iraq is a failure, plain and simple. It’s not just one guy blowing himself up this is going on all the time. Just keep in mind this stuff WASN’T going on before we went in 9 loooooooooong years ago. So how can anyone possibly suggest our blood and treasure was worth THIS outcome. Just admit it our mission didn’t accomplish what it was supposed to. Freedom on the march is more like terrorism on the march.
Here’s the logic according to the neocons. If a dictactor not friendly to the US kills 10 of his nations citizens every year in order to maintain national dicipline that is a tragedy of epic proportions. It that dictator is taken out at the cost of nearly 5,000 American lives, at least 150,000 civilians and at the cost of more than $1,000,000,000,000 and the outcome is mass poverty and an ongoing terrorist campaign that did not exist before the invasion that is considered a success.
For anyone who values the welfare of America and it’s guiding principals as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution it is critical to call out our elected (or selected by SCOTUS) leaders whenever they venture into meddling of the affairs of non-threatening sovereign nations. Until people understand the truth about these rogue missions we will continue to sully the integrity of the American way.
Bud,
OMG.
@Mark – It’s like rubber-necking at a car accident scene isn’t it. At some point you’ll be like me and just laugh at the comments.
Ok Brad, Mark and Steven was Iraq a success, a failure or something in between? If it was a success explain in what way it has helped (a) American security, (b) Iraqi quality of life or (c) enhanced overall international well-being? And please no vague, esoteric or obscure comments about American exceptionalism or other such nonsense. Just concrete, measurable success criteria.
@ Kathryn, I think you are probably right on knee-jerk in that context – It’s more of a planned destruction. But do you think once in planned destruction mode, knee-jerk adds to the chaos it creates?
And @ Steven, I agree that DeMint is consistent. In fact, I think that is part of the “planned destruction”. I’m sorry that DeMint is more married to a philosophy than to the people of South Carolina.
I probably agree with Graham about the cuts in the military. There is already a plan in motion consolidating bases and downsizing. Across the board cuts create problems with the plan. Our military should maintain a minimum size and training and maintenance of their infrastructure. Some of the bases look like they are out of the 50s with their infrastructure; major problems with the water supply at Camp LeJeune has affected both personnel and their families.
It is hard for me to believe there is not a compassionate, intelligent way to balance the budget.
@ Pat – The military does a pretty good job of managing itself and downsizing the installation footprint when congress stays out of the way. That’s why we have a BRAC commission every so often. It allows bases to be evaluated with a degree of independence from looking at things through the congressional lens.
If the military was also allowed to procure weapons systems without “help” from congress, they’d also likely see some cost savings. Congress typically says: “These airplanes/tanks/trucks/ships are made in my district, therefore the military must need more of them.” This interference results in excess spending with little operational benefit.
Silence,
You lie!
Said with irony, not sputtering rage.