When the debt ceiling was raised at the end of July, the bill also created a bipartisan committee charged with coming up with a blueprint to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion by Nov. 23 — a mere 15 days from today. Congress would then have another month to accept or reject the details. If no deal can be reached, the law says across-the-board cuts would occur.
Because the Department of Defense makes up so much of the budget and because other laws exempt Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other entitlements from big reductions, the military would be hammered hard.
With this reality staring them in the face, Congress is likely to change the rules to protect the military, the defense industry and the communities that depend on the military-industrial complex for their livelihood.
Legislation is already being written that would do just that.
So, will members of Congress decide to junk the August agreement and, in effect, give up on deficit reduction? It’s a safe bet they will. To test that prediction, ask yourself if you can imagine any member of the Kansas delegation voting to close Fort Riley or Fort Leavenworth. Or voting for spending reductions that would throw thousands of Boeing workers out on Wichita’s streets.
If you’ve answered those questions in the negative, now multiply the no votes by 50. Every one of the 50 states has important military installations or defense industries. Closing any of them would increase unemployment and reduce state income as those jobless workers quit spending.
Cutting the Pentagon by a trillion dollars over the decade isn’t going to happen.
SHOULD THE PENTAGON budget be slashed? Sure. It will be cut automatically by hundreds of billions when the troops come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. It can be reduced still further without doing unacceptable damage. Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta took the job understanding that the Pentagon budget must be cut by $450 billion over the next decade. But across-the-board reductions would require another $500 billion reduction — which, he said, would be “catastrophic.”
The best way to avoid that “catastrophe” would be for the deficit reduction committee to reach an agreement that Congress and the president can accept.
But that would require at least some Republicans to agree to include some revenue components to the deficit reduction package. Components such as the repeal of tax breaks for profitable industries and higher taxes for the wealthiest 1 percent of the people.
As of today, that prospect is dim, which is why the other alternative, backing away from the August agreement and writing a new set of rules, is what’s likely to happen. That would be embarrassing to the lawmakers. But better to be embarrassed than defeated. Besides, they’re used to it.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
