COMMENTARY:

Pentagon Priorities Put Troops, Security at Risk

In the mean time, another date that has great importance for the future of our security has received little notice: Monday, February 7th, when the Pentagon releases its new budget proposal. More than four years since President Bush first took office pledging to discard "Cold War relics," the Pentagon's budget is still weighted down with systems like the F-22 combat aircraft, the V-22 Osprey, and the Virginia class nuclear attack sub. None of these weapons are needed for the wars now being fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, much less for the more targeted operations required to deal with a global terrorist group like Al Qaeda. Continuing to fund these big ticket systems comes at a high price: one of the reasons the Army is still scrambling to provide adequate body armor and well-protected Humvees to our troops in Iraq is because of the money being wasted on these overpriced, ill-considered weapons projects.

At the turn of the year, the Pentagon seemed to be taking one small step towards budgetary sanity when it leaked plans to cut $30 billion from over a dozen weapons programs. But the cuts amount to only a little over one percent of the $2.5 trillion planned for the Pentagon budget over the next five years. No major systems will be canceled outright, just "stretched out" over more years or trimmed back in numbers.

Other proposed cuts may be stopped in their tracks by the arms lobby, once interested members of Congress from Texas, Georgia and beyond team up with contractors like Lockheed Martin to save home-state systems like the F-22 fighter and the C-130J transport plane.

Much of what is needed to protect against terrorism can be achieved with relatively small, focused investments within the Pentagon budget. Other security priorities fit outside the Pentagon budget altogether. In a report last year, a task force organized by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Security Policy Working Group advocated a shift of approximately $50 billion per year from big-ticket weapons systems like the F-22 and the V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft to programs for securing "loose" nuclear weapons around the world, for nonmilitary foreign aid and for protecting ports, industrial plants and other domestic facilities against possible terrorist attacks. The report targeted many of the same systems involved in the Pentagon's current cuts, but instead of "shaving" them suggested canceling them. One area where funds should clearly be increased is in programs designed to dismantle nuclear weapons and secure or destroy nuclear bomb-making materials in the former Soviet Union. The best way to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is to eliminate access to the bombs and the ingredients for making them. Yet despite giving rhetorical support for these programs, last year the Bush administration requested only $919 million to carry out this work, $72 million less than the year before. By contrast, the Administration is still lavishing $10 billion per year on a missile defense program that couldn't even get an interceptor missile out of its silo in a test in early December.

If security imperatives aren't enough to force a rethinking of defense priorities, economic realities may be. With budget deficits projected at over $400 billion per year even before accounting for the costs of the President's ten year, $2 trillion plan to partially privatize Social Security, military spending increases will have to come at the expense of domestic spending cuts. Unlike during the President's first term, we won't have the option of simply throwing new spending on our great national credit card. Painful choices will have to be made. The Pentagon's post-9/11 exemption may have just run out.

Counting the proposed $80 billion supplemental spending package for Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon insiders expect total military spending to reach well over $500 billion for FY 2006. Even by Washington's standards, a half a trillion dollars is a lot of money. Let's at least make sure it's being spent as effectively as possible to defend our nation and the world.