The Daily Toreador March 09, 2014

Reynolds: Defense budget too large, cuts necessary to save money

By Jakob Reynolds

As the United States begins to withdraw from 13 years of ground war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the time has come for Congress to reconsider our nation's spending on the military.

The Pentagon and Department of Defense have been planning American military needs for the next several years. According to an article in The Washington Post, a budget proposal has already been submitted to Congress that seeks to reduce the military budget to about $495 billion in 2015, finding roughly $75 billion in immediate savings by reducing ground troop forces and revising planned expenditures for all branches, including the National Guard.

The new budget proposal contains reductions of the Army to 440,000 troops and the Marine Corps to around 182,000 during the next three years, lowering the number of ground troops to the smallest U.S. numbers since before World War II. Additionally, the proposal retires the A-10 Warthog fighter planes designed in the 1970s to destroy Soviet tanks and slows the rate of growth for military benefits, as well as decommissioning an aircraft carrier group and other aging equipment, according to Reuters.

According to an article in The Los Angeles Times, the budget proposal expands special operations forces and cyber-warfare units. The cuts aren't particularly popular with the administration, the Pentagon or lawmakers on either side of the aisle. However, Congressional opposition has been somewhat muted as the budget cuts come as a result of the spending caps agreed to during the federal budget debate last year.

Nevertheless, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Pentagon officials do say the United States military is larger than necessary and the cuts to personnel and aging equipment and facilities will preserve funds for training and purchasing new resources. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated the military would still be able to carry out its missions.

Frankly, the argument that trimming military spending leaves the United States at a strategic disadvantage or puts our national security at risk is ridiculous.

One important thing to keep in mind while reading about the military cuts is that in 2012, the United States spent more on its defense budget than the next 10 biggest global defense budgets combined, according to Business Insider. China, whose expansion Republicans in Congress cited in their opposition to the cuts, has a military budget of $132 billion, according to an article in The New York Times.

To further put the American military hegemony in perspective, consider that the U.S. Navy has 19 aircraft carriers currently in commission, including 10 Nimitz-class super-carriers, which are deployed with the support of supply and strike vessels used to assert American power throughout the globe. The only other nations that have more than one aircraft carrier in their navies are Italy, Spain and the UK, each of which have two, according to globalsecurity.org.

Even with the proposed cuts, the United States will far surpass the rest of the world in military might. The truth is, the United States military is much larger than the American people need or can afford. Now that we are pulling out of the Middle East, there are a vast number of domestic issues that need to be dealt with at home before we should be seeking any more military pursuits abroad.

It is highly hypocritical of conservatives to demand cuts to government spending and then turn right around and balk at cuts to favored programs under the justification of "national security." In a time of tight resources, high costs and ill-defined threats abroad, the proposed military budget cuts will provide the U.S. an opportunity to balance and streamline the military by retiring obsolete and unnecessary equipment and programs while maintaining the funds to reshape it to fit 21st century needs.