Still Lots Of Pork In The Defense Bill

I still consider it a big victory for Obama and those who want to eventually see the military-industrial complex neutered to see additional funding for the F-22 fighter struck from the defense appropriations bill. I'm glad the Pentagon took a stand. But the final House version of the bill still includes numerous weapons systems that the White House never called for.

The House approved a $636 billion defense spending bill Thursday after voting to strip money for the controversial F-22 fighter. However, it left funding in place for several other military programs that the Obama administration said it does not want [...]

The White House also hinted that a veto might occur if the bill included funding for the VH-71 presidential helicopter and for an alternative engine program for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But money for both programs remained, as did funding for other items the Pentagon does not want -- extra C-17 transport planes and F-18 jets, as well as the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, a missile defense program.

(Good for the House, by the way, getting all of their appropriations bills done by the end of July. Majoritarian government is efficient government!)

This unwanted equipment totals almost $7 billion dollars at a time when we need to beg and scrape for $2 billion more for the wildly successful cash for clunkers program (just a side note on that, this Economist writer is relying on theory of the program offering little environmental benefit, and not the practice that fuel efficiency has shot up 69% in the cars traded in, saving consumers $187 million in gasoline and reducing carbon emissions by 655,000 metric tons).

Congress will be Congress, as they say. It's just difficult to get things out of the system once they become entrenched. And for every F-22 victory, there are billions of dollars in lesser-known projects that are just as useless and constrain our budgets. We still have a long way to go.

CA-10: An Interview With Anthony Woods

The race in CA-10 for the seat vacated by Ellen Tauscher features three lawmakers with long resumes at the state level. And then there's Anthony Woods, a young man with no prior history in elected office, but festooned with what Benjy Sarlin of The Daily Beast called the best political resume ever. Woods is an African-American product of a single mother who found his way to West Point and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is a two-time Iraq war platoon leader who returned all of his men home safely and received the Bronze Star. He is someone who, after returning home, was dismissed from the Army for challenging its Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. But politicians don't vote with their resumes. They must have the conviction to vote with their principles. I actually conducted the first interview with Woods back in April, and since then others have taken notice. So I thought I'd return to Woods and ask him about some of the key issues facing the Congress in the coming months. A paraphrased transcript of the conversation, executed last Wednesday, is below.

DD: Thanks for talking to me today.

Anthony Woods: No problem, thank you.

DD: So how's it going on the campaign trail?

AW: You know, it's really exciting. We're reaching that point where we're really building some critical mass. As you know, I did pretty well in the last fundraising quarter, we're going to have enough money to compete with some experienced lawmakers. The Human Rights Campaign and the LGBT Victory Fund just endorsed me, which is very exciting and shows their commitment to this campaign. We just had a great grand opening of our office with 50 volunteers from across the area. I'm holding a town hall meeting in Fairfield (this already happened -ed.) coming up and we're really starting to see a path for this to happen. It's great.

DD: OK, well let's start with the biggest issue on everyone's minds right now and that's health care. The way it's looking, if you're elected you might get a vote on this. What are your principles for this debate, and how would you like it to go.

AW: Well, I've been getting more concerned every day. At first, I was thinking that Congress gets it. They're going to do something to deal with the health care crisis in this country that I see talking to folks every day. But as we get into it, they're moving further and further away. First of all, they should have started the conversation at single payer so that if they had to move to the center they would have been coming from a better place. What we have are two issues: access and cost. Clearly the system right now is broken on both fronts. 50 million people go without health insurance and the costs are skyrocketing. And the Congressional effort looks to be falling short. I'm very concerned that there may be no public option.

DD: OK, so will you take a stand right now and say that if the bill before you has no public option that's available the day it's introduced, you won't vote for it?

AW: I don't know if I'd exactly go that far, but here's what I would say. I think there has to be a public option that's efficient and effective. And if the Democrats have some bold leadership, they can do it and do it right. What we need is some competition in the individual marketplace. If people have to buy insurance, we have to give them a choice that's affordable. So that's my first priority. And if the bill before me doesn't have that, yeah, I'd have trouble voting for it.

DD: You say it's about bold leadership, OK. Right now, about 90% of all private insurers offer abortion coverage as part of their health care plans. If a public option is supposed to compete with the private insurance market, doesn't it have to offer the same kind of baseline coverage that private insurers offer, especially if they are legal medical services?

AW: I think so. I am pro-choice, and I don't believe in limiting the right to choose. And if you're giving someone health insurance who has had trouble affording it, if they have to make the difficult choice to get an abortion, they need the same kind of resources that you could get on the private market. So I would agree with that.

DD: OK. I want to talk about the F-22. As you know, the Senate just voted down funding for additional funding for F-22 fighters that were designed for the Cold War and have never been used in Iraq or Afghanistan and are apparently vulnerable to rain. What's your reaction to that, and then I want to get into the military budget more generally.

AW: I support stripping the funding. My view is that if the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President all say we don't need them, we probably don't. And regardless of the impact on jobs, we should listen to that. I think we need in procurement a short-term view and a long-term view. We should obviously be prepared to defend the country, but we should be prudent with those funds, because it is real money.

DD: The F-22 funding and some other funding may stop, but the military budget will increase this year. And we still spend more on military activities than any other country on Earth combined. How can we continue to do that, isn't it unsustainable?

AW: My deployments in Iraq taught me that the military cannot be the solution to all of our problems overseas. Because we have this mindset currently, we've created a situation where the military is providing resources that other agencies could provide. We shouldn't have the Defense Department doing the work of the State Department or NGOs or US AID. I think if we shift some of that burden, it will actually make the troops safer, because we can focus resources on protecting them and providing them the equipment they need, instead of making the military the sole solution to every problem overseas.

DD: I want to tell you about a story I saw in the Wall Street Journal. It showed that the top 1% of wage earners in this country, the executives, the wealthy, are now earning 35% of all compensation. How do you react to that?

AW: Wow. That says a lot. You know, these are tough times, and when you see a tiny fraction like that benefiting from the resources of this county, I think it says that they need to sacrifice. We're in a situation where we implemented tax cuts in the middle of a war. We're trying to figure out how to pay for health care. And the top 1%, they're doing pretty well. I think we need some shared sacrifice.

DD: Why do you think it's so difficult for Democrats to simply say what you just said in that way? Even the surtax they've come up with in the House to pay for health care is getting dismissed. Why can't we just make the case that America is worth paying for, especially for those who use the public commons so much?

AW: I really think it starts with people who are willing to say that. And it's why I want to be there representing this community in Washington. My opponents are mostly the same politicians who we keep sending to Washington again and again, and I think we need someone who isn't afraid to say that, you know, the country has provided a lot to a small group of people, and they should give a little bit back.

DD: OK, let's move on. The foreclosure crisis is still hitting California hard, and so far the solutions that have come from Congress hasn't worked. What are some of your ideas to keep people in their homes?

AW: This is something I hear about from people every day when I'm campaigning. In California, we had a moratorium on foreclosures for a while, and I think that's part of the equation, but if you don't provide loan modifications for people, eventually that's not going to be enough. The immediate crisis we have is that people are losing their homes, so we need to make the necessary adjustments to allow people to refinance. After that immediate crisis, I think we have to clean up the regulatory environment, both in the mortgage market and also in banking.

DD: I've heard an interesting proposal called "right-to-rent," where people facing foreclosure can pay rent on the home for a number of years, they get to stay where they are, the banks have a revenue stream and don't have to deal with a blighted property, and the community gains from not having foreclosed properties on their block. What do you think of that?

AW: Sounds good. A lot of people are suffering right now. And it's traumatic to uproot yourself and have to leave your community, to have your kids leave schools. So anything that keeps folks in homes and communities sounds like a smart idea to me. It's certainly better than what we're doing.

DD: But how do we institute something like that when the banks, in the words of Dick Durbin, "own the place"?

AW: That's a tough problem. You know, the healthiest banks right now are the ones who separated investment and lending. And I think that most people I meet are frustrated to see the banks get us to this point. They want common-sense regulatory solutions to change that environment. I think the banks will have a real problem on their hands if they keep pushing and pushing, and people don't see a change in their daily lives while the banks rake in tons of money.

DD: OK, but what's the theory of change? How do we get all this done? When you have a situation where special interests rule and campaign contribution money means more than constituents, how can we fight for progressive outcomes in a Congress that appears to care more about the next election?

AW: Well, I think we have to elect people who are accountable to the ones who sent them. For me, I will give as much access to everyday people as possible, and let them shape my agenda rather than special interests and lobbyists. And I think we need to elect more people who have this philosophy. We're going to have to do it one representative at a time. And I think that's one of the reasons why my campaign is taking off. We cannot expect different results with the same politicians dealing with the same problems year after year. So I don't know if we can deal with everything at once, but we'll have to do it one representative at a time.

DD: OK, last question. Obviously, here in California, we're looking at a terrible budget and lots of structural problems. What can be done at the federal level to perhaps help the state out of this mess?

AW: Well, just looking at the state budget deal, it's basically more of the same. There's a crisis of leadership in Sacramento, and it produced a budget full of accounting tricks that just kick the can down the road. It's clear that the system is broken, and that's why I'd prefer a Constitutional convention and at the least getting rid of the 2/3 rule for budgets. California is such an important economy, it's a big chunk of the country, and when we aren't doing well, the country suffers. At the federal level, I think we need smart investment. The state is a donor state, it doesn't get back in funds what it pays in taxes. So I'd like to help reduce that. And also, we can take advantage of the resources and opportunities in California. This state has the chance to be a new energy leader, through wind and solar. And so I'd like to see those kinds of smart investments in California.

DD: Do you support a second stimulus, focused on state fiscal stabilization funds to save those jobs that rely on state spending?

AW: I think we're having a hard time distributing the funds from the first stimulus. So I think we have to give it some time to work. But we are definitely at a crisis point in this state, I see it every day, so I think we need to monitor the situation. And we have to make sure there's a safety net in place for the people of California.

DD: OK, great, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

AW: Thank you.

Setup-Punch

John Cornyn misspoke when he claimed that we needed the F-22 to combat the rising national security threat from India.

He meant to say Indiana.

After all, they voted for Obama, and he's not even from here!

The Unknown War With India

The President had a big victory this week when the Senate voted to strip funding for additional F-22 fighter jets, which the Pentagon and the Air Force didn't want, which haven't been flown once in Iraq or Afghanistan and which are apparently vulnerable to rain. It was a small step toward breaking the stranglehold of the military-industrial complex. The lobbyists were out in force to keep this alive, and a lot of lawmakers who have parts of the F-22 made in their district wanted to keep the gravy train going, but eventually, sanity prevailed. The military budget is increasing this year, and eventually we have to end a circumstance where we spend more on the military than every other country in the world combined, but if we couldn't cancel the F-22, we would not be able to cancel pretty much anything. So it was a good step toward lessening the power and influence of military contractors. Robert Farley has a great roundup of opinions.

Naturally, John Cornyn (Bugfuck Crazy-TX) doesn't agree. In fact, he thinks we have to use the F-22 to counter all sorts of threats. Including... India.

"It's important to our national security because we're not just fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," Cornyn says. "We're fighting -- we have graver threats and greater threats than that: From a rising India, with increased exercise of their military power; Russia; Iran, that's threatening to build a nuclear weapon; with North Korea, shooting intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of hitting American soil."

I wasn't aware that we were at war with India. In fact, I don't get over there much, but I'm pretty sure we're an ally. In fact, Hillary Clinton just spent four days there this week. We just completed a civilian nuclear power agreement with them last year.

I guess being Republican means "never having to say you're sorry to an allied country for calling them an enemy." Remember when John McCain thought we were at war with Spain?

A Small Victory

The F-22 fighter is built in 44 states. The military contractors who build it and provide supplies spend many millions in lobby costs. Armed Services Committee appropriators in particular get slathered in special interest money and reward their contributors with as many contracts as possible. The overall trajectory of military spending since World War II is that the military part of the budget is magic and we can spend whatever we want on it. As a result, we spend more on the weapons and tools of war than every other country on Earth, combined.

So it's not every day that a major weapons program gets phased out through the appropriations process. It happened today, as 58 Senators voted to cancel additional spending on the F-22 fighter, a plane which the Pentagon doesn't want, which the Air Force doesn't want, which hasn't flown a single mission in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which has been found in tests to be vulnerable to rain.

It was a parochial vote that had more to do with whether a Senator's state builds major portions of the F-22 than anything else. And it will not signal any kind of near-term sea change in the military budget, which will increase this year. A lot of the F-22 money will just re-route into other fighters like the F-35 and unmanned aerial drones. But there's a symbolic significance here. The President and the Secretary of Defense took on the military-industrial complex by threatening to veto the entire defense bill if this funding stayed intact, and in this case they won. If we're ever going to break their stranglehold on the process, we have to win this kind of vote. Over time, we may even have a President that says "hey, it's kind of insane to spend more on the military than every other country combined" - don't laugh, it could happen - and by showing the ability to cancel weapons projects like this, it will be easier for that future President to maneuver. And I particularly like some of the language Obama used in his comments about this, saying that our budget is a zero-sum game and our "citizens lose" if more money goes to unnecessary weapons systems. With all the talk from the fiscal scolds, there is an opportunity to channel that toward a military budget full of bloat and waste.

It's a good first step, nothing more. But showing we can get by without weapons systems designed for the Cold War is important.

...some additional good news here. Though he voted against stripping the funding, Robert Byrd took a vote on the bill. We've been hearing with respect to health care that Democrats really only have 58 Senators, due to two ill members. Byrd is now back and voting. And you cannot tell me that wild horses could keep Ted Kennedy from a health care vote. The Democrats will have 60 votes. What they do with them is their choice.

F-22 Vote In The Senate

The word from the White House was that they'd get this vote, so we'll see. Watching on C-SPAN now...

...I've heard a Lamar Alexander, Mark Warner and Ben Nelson Aye, with Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins no. It'll be close.

Bayh, aye!

Klobuchar, Harkin, Tim Johnson aye, and Bill Nelson as well. Blanche Lincoln gets an aye as well, with Wyden and Stabenow. Lieberman's a no.

I think some of the moderate Dems without a big stake in the F-22 are being at least a little honest about fiscal responsibility.

Udall of Colorado a no...

Bob Casey, aye... Udall of Colorado just changed his vote to aye! Pryor went aye as well, with Webb and Dorgan.

I think we might get this.

...Ensign went aye. I guess Judd Gregg and Mike Enzi did as well. And Coburn!

...I may not have added context. An aye vote would strike funding from the defense authorization bill for the F-22 fighter, a weapon of which the Pentagon and the Air Force don't want any more. If we're ever going to break the military-industrial complex, we have to win this kind of vote.

George Voinovich and Jeff Merkley went aye. And Kit Bond! Wow, lots of Republicans voting for this. Richard Shelby, too.

...Conrad and Landrieu are aye votes. McCaskill went aye. And John Kerry. No for Mark Begich, I think this is an Alaska-Hawaii alliance, as both Hawaii Senators went no as well. That happens fairly often in the Senate.

Lindsey Graham and Lisa Murkowski go no, with Jon Tester (damn). Baucus goes no.

Lindsey Graham just changed his vote to aye!

...The final vote is 58-40! Amendment approved! That's a huge victory for the President and transforming defense spending.

...Obama comments on the passage of stripping F-22 funding. "I reject the notion that we have to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on unnecessary weapons... that's why I'm grateful that the Senate just voted not to spend $1.75 billion on F-22 funding that we don't need. Our budget is a zero-sum game, and if more money goes to F-22's, it is our troops and our citizens who lose."

Gates on the F-22

Remember, this is Robert Gates, who served under a Republican President both at the CIA and the Defense Department, arguing in the most explicit language I've seen from a public official against the dictates of the military-industrial complex:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made an impassioned case Thursday for terminating the F-22 program after production of 187 planes, as the Obama administration sought to blunt a bipartisan push to add money to the defense budget for the fighter jet.

"If we can't bring ourselves to make this tough but straightforward decision -- reflecting the judgment of two very different presidents, two different secretaries of defense, two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the current Air Force secretary and chief of staff -- where do we draw the line?" he said in a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago. "If we can't get this right, what on earth can we get right?" [...]

The normally staid Gates became especially animated Thursday describing his frustration with lawmakers' efforts to keep building F-22s. "The more they buy of stuff we don't need, the less we have available for the stuff we do need," he told reporters, his voice rising. "It is just as simple as that. It ain't a complicated problem."

Even if Congress acquiesces on the F-22, Gates warned, the Pentagon has to do a better job of setting realistic goals for its weapons programs.

"We must break the old habit of adding layer upon layer of cost, complexity and delay to systems that are so expensive and so elaborate that only a small number can be built and are usable in only a narrow range of low-probability scenarios," he said.

Jack Murtha seems to think there won't be a veto. I actually hope that the White House doesn't compromise on this. If they do, there will be no political will to go up against the MIC again, at least for a while. However, now that the defense bill has become a legislative vehicle for the bill expanding hate crimes legislation to sexual orientation, which passed the Senate with 63 votes yesterday, it does need to go through. But the President has the upper hand here - the defense bill is must-pass, and Congress doesn't exactly inspire fear in anyone.

Hopefully the Senate can vote this out of the bill next week. It'll be close.

F-22 Intrigue

The debate in the Senate over additional funding for the F-22 (even if this funding is cut, we'll have 187 of the fighters available) took a turn last night.

Senator Levin for some reason withdraws his amendment to strike funding for the F-22 fighter that the President wants discontinued and over which he threatens a veto of the bill. And hate crimes legislation finally finds a legislative vehicle to be attached to. Only it's... the bill the President threatens to veto if the F-22 money isn't struck. That ain't gonna go over well, if anyone's looking. I don't know if there's any other effort underway besides Levin's to strike that F-22 funding. We'll see. Meanwhile, Senator Reid has done what needs doing to clear the decks for a vote on the hate crimes amendment. He's filled the amendment tree and filed for cloture [...]

I'd hate to see them stay until one in the morning on Friday to get this done, only to attach it to a doomed bill. But maybe it's not so doomed if this is attached. Maybe that's the thinking. To trade the president the hate crimes salve he promised the LGBT community after the DOMA brief fiasco in exchange for his letting the F-22 authorization escape the veto. Slick!

The White House appears serious enough about removing the additional F-22 funding that I suspect the amendment will return in some form, if not in conference committee. Peter Orszag also objects to $438.9 million in funding for a new engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, which has a perfectly good engine already. And the F-22 funding is being assailed in print media, both in this NYT op-ed:

The plane, the most expensive jet fighter ever built, was designed for cold war aerial combat. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly argued that the Pentagon needs to phase out such high-cost, outdated programs so it can buy the kinds of weapons that American troops desperately need to complete their mission in Iraq and defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The F-22 has not been used in either war. Buying more would only make it harder for the Air Force to shift money into aircraft like unmanned intelligence drones and the more adaptable, cheaper-to-fly F-35 fighter, which is set to begin production in 2012 [...]

Providing for America’s real defense needs is expensive enough without making the military budget double as a make-work jobs program. Capping the F-22 program at 187, as the Pentagon wants, would keep production lines intact for years to come, well beyond the immediate need for stimulus-related job creation.

Not to mention this reported piece in WaPo (h/t Hilzoy why the hell are you leaving blogging!!!), detailing all the failures of the F-22 as a vehicle:

"The United States' top fighter jet, the Lockheed Martin F-22, has recently required more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces, confidential Pentagon test results show. (...)

"It is a disgrace that you can fly a plane [an average of] only 1.7 hours before it gets a critical failure" that jeopardizes success of the aircraft's mission, said a Defense Department critic of the plane who is not authorized to speak on the record. Other skeptics inside the Pentagon note that the planes, designed 30 years ago to combat a Cold War adversary, have cost an average of $350 million apiece and say they are not a priority in the age of small wars and terrorist threats.

The plane is literally "vulnerable to rain." And we spend $1.7 billion a piece for them.

So I think the F-22 funding will come out, by hook or by crook. But here's the really interesting part of the defense bill:

The Obama administration has objected to a provision in the 2010 defense funding bill currently before the Senate that would bar the military's use of contractors to interrogate detainees.

The provision, strongly backed by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), describes interrogations as an "inherently governmental function" that "cannot be transferred to contractor personnel." It would give the Defense Department one year from the bill's enactment to ensure that the military had the resources to comply with it.

A White House policy statement yesterday signaled "many areas of agreement" with the bill that emerged from Levin's committee late last month but said the administration has "serious concerns" about some provisions. The statement repeated Obama's threat to veto the $680 billion bill unless $1.75 billion to fund an additional seven F-22 fighter aircraft is removed.

The more that we privatize interrogation, the more likelihood that those less accountable contractors sully America through torture. We can absolutely meet the needs of intelligence gathering without using CACI or other contractors, and it's sad to see the Obama Administration fight this provision.

Basically, there's a whole lot tied up in this bill at the moment. I could see nothing passing and defense funded under last year's agreement. Which would be a net loss and a missed opportunity at reform, not to mention a loss for the hate crimes bill.

The Battle Over The F-22

One area where President Obama deserves some praise is his stand on the F-22, at odds with parochial interests in Congress and even splitting some senior Democrats:

Democratic leaders support an amendment that would strip the $1.75 billion for seven additional jets from the 2010 defense authorization bill, which is being debated on the Senate floor this week.

But several senior Democrats are from states that will see gains from building more F-22s.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who represents the state where Pratt & Whitney builds the F-22 engine, told The Hill he was working with his Democratic colleagues to convince them to support the purchase of more jets despite the president’s opposition. Dodd also faces a tough reelection campaign next year.

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, will be a key vote to watch. The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, which supports removing the F-22 funds, lists Schumer as poised to vote against stripping the money.

Schumer declined to say how he was voting, telling The Hill he is still studying the issue, and advised: “Watch the vote.”

Sen. Levin withdrew the amendment temporarily today so the Senate could take up the hate crimes bill. Sounds to me like Levin feared he didn't have the votes.

Matt Duss lays out what this is really about.

So just to be clear, this argument over the F-22, at least as it’s occurring in Congress, not really a debate over defending the country — it’s a test of whether the requirements of electoral politics can outweigh the requirements of American national security as defined by the Department of Defense. This isn’t to suggest that Congress has no role in determining American defense requirements — of course it does, but let’s not pretend that seven extra planes is the difference between air dominance and ceding the skies.

Meanwhile, Mike Goldfarb observes that “one thing that’s been consistent throughout this process has been quiet support for F-22, in contrast to the vocal opposition from Obama, Gates, and McCain. Most people thought that F-22 was DOA as soon as Gates released the administration’s defense budget. But it turns out that support for the program in Congress is pretty broad.”

I don’t know if I’d call Lockheed and Boeing spending $6.5 million and $2.4 million, respectively, on lobbying in the first three months of 2009 “quiet support.” But yes, it is rather impressive what kind of support can be gotten for an item that the military doesn’t want by spreading its production out into 48 different states, donating vast sums of money to various political action committees, and sending armies of lobbyists onto the Hill. It’s almost as if politicians were interested in getting re-elected or something.

We're moving into a phase of whether we can take even this minor step in defying the military-industrial complex - remember, the overall military budget will increase this year - or whether we're resigned to defense contractors eating up massive government contracts forever, permanently hamstringing our budget. That's what's at stake in this amendment.

Congress Sides With The Military-Industrial Complex

Damn.

Lawmakers defy veto threat on F-22 fighter

Congress on Thursday moved forward with plans to build more Lockheed Martin F-22 fighter jets, disregarding a veto threat from the Obama administration.

Lawmakers also moved to authorize the funding for an alternative engine for the Joint Strike Fighter F-35.

Congress is setting the stage for a showdown over the 2010 defense authorization bill with the administration and in particular Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as the Office of Management and Budget issued a statement outlining the veto threat Wednesday over both issues.

Gates proposed the cuts earlier this year as part of an effort that he said would better spend taxpayer dollars on military priorities. He has said he’s confident the Air Force will have enough F-22s.

Lawmakers pushing to save the programs say the F-22 and second engine for the F-35 are vital to national security.

They also argue eliminating the F-22 program would kill off jobs during a brutal recession.

I hope even the lawmakers saying that first line aren't dumb enough to believe it.

As for the "weaponized Keynesianism" of the second, keep in mind that these are the same people who constantly bite their nails about the budget deficit, who claim that government never created a job, or that a spending bill is not a stimulus bill. Not to mention the fact - a fact I don't even like - that the total military budget will expand this year, as funding for the F-22 and the needless new engine for the F-35 will shift into other military priorities, ones that also create jobs. My preference would be to shift all this military spending into something creative instead of destructive, but without being able to close out these projects when they outlive their usefulness, we just create a monster. This country spends nearly as much on our military than the rest of the world combined, and far too much of that leaks into the pockets of contractors who build things that go unused, or gets put toward projects which quadruple in cost from projection to completion. The money is wildly inefficient, comparatively speaking, and this entire notion of military spending as sacrosanct makes it impossible to fund the rest of government without the fiscal scolds carping about deficits.



To segue into a separate point, there will be a conference committee on this, and so the White House certainly has the ability to use that tool, which the Republican majority used time and again, to take this funding which the Pentagon did not seek out of the bill. Practically every bill that passed through Congress from 1994-2006 got scrubbed of anything remotely progressive and sent back to each chamber with a nice big "take it or leave it" Post-It Note on the front. Many think that this is the way a decent health care reform bill can be pushed through the Congress, and that this is all part of the 31-dimensional chess the White House is playing. While they've already offered the veto threat on the military spending, and that might come about, it's important to look at the past experience with conference committees and this Administration. The short answer is: they don't like to use them and are more concerned about their personal schedule. The credit card reform bill can be instructive here.

In the Senate vote for that legislation, Tom Coburn added a supposed poison pill amendment allowing concealed weapons in public parks. The Senate passed the bill, and the House had already passed a version without that amendment. But rather than go to a conference committee, the House just up and passed the Senate's bill, with the guns in parks amendment, Obama signed it, and now we all can take our snub-noses to Yosemite. The official reason given was that the President wanted a bill on his desk by Memorial Day.

And they did exactly the same thing with the war supplemental. Many people had problems with provisions like the IMF loans or cash for clunkers, which certainly could have been fixed if anyone cared to do so. But the White House wanted it to move quickly, and so the Senate passed the House's bill.

I should note that at the end of Ezra's post today comes this:

(The President) wants to sign a bill in October.

I'm happy to believe that the White House has a secret strategy to fix the health care bill in conference, but recent history shows that they are far more interested in scheduling than these fixes. Maybe if they really, really care about a certain provision, it will get excised or included. But none of us actually know what those concerns truly are.

Challenging The Status Quo

I'm going to try and get off Sanford Watch for just a moment, mainly because I'm reading the cringeworthy emails with most of my hand in front of my face. Because, despite the fact that it will get almost no media coverage, this is a pretty important statement from the Administration.

Preparing for a possible showdown with Congress, the White House on Wednesday threatened to veto legislation authorizing a $680 billion military budget if it contains money for jet fighters the Pentagon doesn’t want.

In a statement, the White House Office of Management and Budget said the $369 million that a House committee added to the bill as a downpayment for 12 additional F-22 fighters runs counter to the "collective judgment" of the military’s top leaders.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to end production of the radar-evading F-22 after 187 aircraft have been built. Last week, in a preview of the White House’s veto threat, Gates called the funding boost a "big problem." [...]

Another provision in the House bill the White House strongly objects to adds $603 million for a back-up engine intended for another fighter jet in development called the F-35. The committee says the alternative engine is needed in the event the primary propulsion system has problems that might ground the aircraft.

But the White House says the extra engine isn’t needed and will slow the fielding of the F-35, a single-engine aircraft to be used by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

The backstory is that the Defense Department and the White House signed off on these cuts to the military budget, so did the relevant leadership in the armed services, and so did THE MANUFACTURERS OF THE PRODUCTS. At the time I didn't consider it that big a deal, because a lot of this money gets shuttled around to other equipment, and the overall military budget remains unsustainably high, at a time when we're scrounging for funding to give people quality health care. But some parochial politicians, and considering that the F-22 gets supplies from 43 states they're practically ALL parochial when it comes to the war machines, stuck the funding back in, for weapons and equipment that the defense establishment doesn't want.

For the President to offer a veto threat, which to my recollection is the first veto threat of his Presidency, over ending the military-industrial complex gravy train is pretty significant. If we don't take the first step and restore the ability to end weapons systems, then the military budget will just grow and grow. Most politicians already consider it magic and unrelated to any other spending, even while they scold about "runaway budget deficits" in the same breath. The jobs argument attempted here is bogus, "weaponized Keynesianism", as Barney Frank called it. Building bridges and roads and a smart energy grid were the kinds of job-creating engines that all the fiscal scolds considered too expensive during the stimulus fight, but suddenly when defense is on the menu, they're all "jobs, baby, jobs." Those Blue Dogs who scream about budgets can now tell everyone why we can afford a plane that the Air Force doesn't need and the manufacturer doesn't even want to make.

The President's taking a small risk here. I can already hear the resurrection of Zell Miller demagoguing in 2012 about "what are we gonna use, spitballs?" But this represents the setting of a marker, one of the first I can remember, that our military budget is not sustainable, and as a first step we have to be able to wind down Cold War-era weapons systems that are completely inapplicable to the present day. Not many people have allowed themselves to publicly make this argument. So it deserves some credit.

The relevant parts of the statement from the White House OMB below.

The Administration supports House passage of H.R. 2647, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. The Administration appreciates the House Armed Services Committee's continued strong support of our national defense, including its support for the Department's topline budget requests for both the base budget and for overseas contingency operations.

The Administration appreciates, among other things, the leadership of the Committee in supporting many of the President's initiatives to terminate or reduce programs that have troubled histories, or that failed to demonstrate adequate performance when compared to other programs and activities needed to carry out U.S. national security objectives. In addition, the Administration welcomes the Committee's support for the Secretary of Defense's plan to increase the size of the civilian acquisition workforce and reduce the Department's reliance on contractors for critical acquisition functions. Also, the Administration appreciates that the Committee included authorities that are important to field commanders, such as the Commanders' Emergency Response Program and the authority to reimburse coalition partners.

While there are many areas of agreement with the Committee, the Administration nonetheless has serious concerns with a number of provisions that could constrain the ability of the Armed Forces to carry out their missions, that depart from Secretary Gates' decisions reflected in the President's Fiscal Year 2010 Budget which carefully balanced fiscal constraints, program performance, strategic needs and capabilities, or that raise other issues. The Administration looks forward to working with the Congress to address these concerns, some of which are outlined below, and to refine this legislation to align it more closely with national defense priorities.

F-22 Advance Procurement: The Administration strongly objects to the provisions in the bill authorizing $369 million in advanced procurement funds for F-22s in FY 2011. The collective judgment of the Service Chiefs and Secretaries of the military departments suggests that a final program of record of 187 F-22s is sufficient to meet operational requirements. If the final bill presented to the President contains this provision, the President's senior advisors would recommend a veto.

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program: The Administration strongly objects to the addition of $603 million for development and procurement of the alternative engine program, and the requirement for the Department to fund the alternative engine program in future budget requests to the President. These changes will delay the fielding of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) capability and capacity, adversely impacting the Department's overall strike fighter inventory. In addition, the Administration objects to provisions of the bill that mandate an alternative engine program for the JSF. The current engine is performing well with more than 11,000 test hours. Expenditures on a second engine are unnecessary and impede the progress of the overall JSF program. Alleged risks of a fleet-wide grounding due to a single engine are exaggerated. The Air Force currently has several fleets that operate on a single-engine source. The Administration also objects to the limit on the obligation of overall JSF development funding to 75% of the amount authorized until Department of Defense (DOD) has obligated all funds provided in FY 2010 for the alternative engine program. If the final bill presented to the President would seriously disrupt the F-35 program, the President's senior advisors would recommend a veto.

...Lorelei Kelly has more.

Carrots for Barney Frank

I criticized Barney Frank last week for his demonizing of progressives and slavish defense of the Administration's horrid DOMA brief. He deserved the criticism. Now he deserves some plaudits.

First, Frank offered an amendment that would strip out unnecessary funding from the Defense Authorization Bill for the F-22 program, which the Pentagon, the President and even the manufacturer agree should be shuttered. Not only will this offer clarity on who wants to put parochial interests above the needs of the country, it will offer a good lesson on how "fiscal responsibility" goes out the window when it comes to defense spending, which of course to Blue Dogs and Republicans is magic and doesn't impact the bottom line. I don't think this amendment will be successful, actually, but House members should be up front about adding needless weapons spending that has not been used in the Iraq or Afghanistan theater while at the same time they scream about the deficit.

Then, Frank introduced a bill to decriminalize marijuana use, one of the first bills to upset the bipartisan consensus on the failed war on drugs that I've seen in decades.

A controversial law in Massachusetts could go national if Congressman Barney Frank gets his way.

Frank has filed a bill that would eliminate federal penalties for personal possession of less than 100 grams of marijuana.

It would also make the penalty for using marijuana in public just $100.

"I think John Stuart Mill had it right in the 1850s," said Congressman Frank, "when he argued that individuals should have the right to do what they want in private, so long as they don't hurt anyone else. It's a matter of personal liberty. Moreover, our courts are already stressed and our prisons are over-crowded. We don't need to spend our scarce resources prosecuting people who are doing no harm to others."

Frank says it best there. We should not be warehousing nonviolent offenders who do no harm to others and send them to what amounts to violent crime college. It's destructive to those individuals who need treatment and not jail, destructive to our budgets which runneth over with prison spending, and destructive to law enforcement who could be pursuing criminals but instead have to bust people for pot. Digby has more.

While Frank sometimes uses his prodigious skills to front for elite interests, and while he seems to unduly criticize those who attack his point of view from the left, he's a very useful lawmaker because he's willing to fight these battles that practically nobody else will fight.

...True Majority wants you to call your lawmaker and tell them to vote against purchasing F-22's that the Pentagon doesn't even want.

...Great quote by Rep. Frank:

I am of course struck that so many of my colleagues who are so worried about the deficit apparently think the Pentagon is funded with Monopoly money that somehow doesn’t count... These arguments will come from the very people who denied that the economic recovery plan created any jobs. We have a very odd economic philosophy in Washington: It’s called weaponized Keynesianism. It is the view that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.

It makes the hand-wringing over paying for health care completely ridiculous.

We Need An Unmaking Of The American Consensus

I'm thinking about printing out this paragraph from Digby and putting it above my bathroom mirror like Stallone did when he trained in Siberia in Rocky IV.

The bipartisan elite consensus that governs this country is quite simple. First, deficits and high taxes are always the basic cause of economic stress or the biggest threat facing a recovery, no matter the circumstances. (The corollary is that cutting taxes and spending are the ultimate answer to every economic challenge.) Taxes on the wealthy (excuse me "the most productive") must be kept as low as possible, the military cannot be subject to any budgetary constraint and the national security state cannot be held accountable, business and industry must always be given top priority and all other government expenditures are legislative bargaining chips regardless of their impact on the lives of average Americans. Nobody questions that consensus or even suggests that some other set of priorities might be useful from time to time.

This pretty well describes every single bit of dysfunction that we deal with in making progress, and it's always been there to a certain extent. It's a consensus that serves elites and those in positions of power in Washington, and any defeat of that is always an uphill climb, even in a time of crisis. Paul Krugman posts a very revealing set of polls from back in the mid-1930s, during the Depression, that parallel today's polls showing Americans, after years if not decades of constant conservative dogma, fearing higher deficits just in time for a Democratic President (though not to the level of media hype):

Gallup Poll [December, 1935]

Do you think it necessary at this time to balance the budget and start reducing the national debt?

70% Yes
30 No

Gallup Poll [May, 1936]

Are the acts of the present Administration helping or hindering recovery?

55% Helping
45 Hindering

Gallup Poll (AIPO) [November, 1936]

DO YOU THINK IT NECESSARY FOR THE NEW ADMINISTRATION TO BALANCE THE BUDGET?

65% YES
28 NO
7 NO ANSWER

This was right around the time that Roosevelt tried to balance the budget, leading to a mini-recession inside the Depression, and prolonging the overall slowdown. He learned from that mistake, but the question is whether or not we will today. As Krugman says:

The point here, I think, is that most people don’t know much about macroeconomics. Hey, most members of Congress don’t know much about macroeconomics — and recent discussions suggest the possibility that many macroeconomists don’t know much about macroeconomics. Voters do, however, notice results.

So the moral for Obama is, of course, to ignore this poll, for the sake both of the economy and of Congressional Democrats — Blue Dogs included.

Sadly, I don't think that's how it'll turn out. Look no further than the totally shameful overturning, against the wishes of the Pentagon, of the phasing out of the F-22 program, which nobody in the military wants, which EVEN LOCKHEED MARTIN has agreed not to build anymore, but which is so important to elements of the military industrial complex that Democrats and Republicans in the House couldn't say no:

Yesterday, the House Armed Services Committee “threw a wrench in the Obama administration’s plans to end” the F-22 program, voting 31-30 on a measure marking up the Defense Department spending bill that would “add $369 million in extra funding to keep production of the Air Force’s most advanced jet alive.” Six Democrats — Reps. Jim Marshall (GA), Joe Courtney (CT), Gabrielle Giffords (AZ), Eric Massa (NY), Bobby Bright (AL), and Mike McIntyre (NC) — joined 25 Republicans in voting for the amendment. The Wall Street Journal reports that “the extra money would be a boost for Lockheed [Martin's] Marietta, Ga., production facility” which is in Marshall’s home state.

WTF Eric Massa?

Add to that the money in the war funding supplemental for C-17 planes that the military doesn't want. Clearly what happens is that parochial interests about plants scattered across all 50 states trump the national interest. And in the end, perversely, the people in those districts get screwed.

I recognize that there's a structural problem here as well, with the undemocratic nature of the US Senate and the even more undemocratic filibuster. But the establishment consensus knows no party, and you cannot lay the blame entirely at the feet of process.

If a near-Depression and a triumvirate of Democrats in Washington can shock this loose, I don't really think we ever will.

"Then We Realized We ARE Getting Paid Off!"

Read beyond the headline on this one:

Lockheed Martin will not spend any more time and effort trying to overturn Defense Secretary Robert Gates' decision to halt production of F-22 Raptor fighter jets, a top company official said Tuesday.

After making a vigorous case for the F-22 with Gates, other senior Pentagon officials and Congress in recent months, Lockheed plans to move on and meet its commitments for other major defense programs such as the F-35 joint strike fighter.

"We had our chance to lobby this matter," Bruce Tanner, executive vice president and chief financial officer, said in a quarterly conference call with financial analysts.

"We think we had a full hearing of that discussion," Tanner said. "We are disappointed by the decisions, but we will accept those and go on."

I don't know if you've ever seen the military-industrial complex in action over the past 50 years or so, but they frequently, um, don't take "no" for an answer. So the idea that they had a serious debate on the merits and came up short doesn't scan. But it does, if you add this additional information:

Loren Thompson, a staunch F-22 advocate with the Lexington Institute, said Lockheed officials realized that their company stands to benefit more than any major contractor from Gates’ defense-spending plans, including a decision to accelerate work on the F-35 [...]

Lockheed’s biggest program, the $300 billion F-35 joint strike fighter being developed in Fort Worth, is designated for $3 billion or more in additional funding in 2010 under the Gates plan to increase the pace of flight testing and production work.

The liberal supporters of Bob Gates' transformation strategy always seem to leave out the fact that it's a lateral strategy. Lockheed's going to do just fine under this new management. And the military budget will remain as bloated as ever.

Robert Gates Is Not A Gangster

Somehow, the Defense Secretary got the Air Force to acquiesce to his demands to ramp down production of the F-22.

Top Air Force officials said Monday that they supported the Obama administration’s decision to buy only four more of the advanced F-22 fighter jets, making it less likely that Congress will insist on extending its production.

The Air Force had previously said it needed 60 more of the planes, a position that had built expectations for a fierce battle in Congress over the program’s future.

Legislators from Georgia, Connecticut and other states with major suppliers are still likely to push for more planes. But it will be much harder for them to succeed if the Air Force is not quietly supporting their efforts, military analysts said.

Several industry officials and former Air Force officers said they would not be surprised to see Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the plane, pull back from a lobbying campaign emphasizing how many jobs would be lost if production was halted.

Michael Donley and Norton Schwartz, the secretary and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, even penned an op-ed in the WaPo arguing to move forward from the F-22.

I confess that I assumed this fight would be much more protracted. And it may still be - I wouldn't put it past defense-state lawmakers to insist on building what even the Air Force doesn't want. But let's again read between the lines here. The next paragraph after the ones I cited in the Times article are:

Under the administration’s plan, the Pentagon would speed up the testing of another Lockheed Martin fighter, the F-35, which it plans to buy in much greater quantities. Industry officials said the company might not want to risk angering the new administration as it already had many other lucrative defense contracts.

In other words, we're talking about moving from one Lockheed assembly line to another. Don't take my word for it, look at Donley and Schwartz' op-ed:

Much rides on the F-35's success, and it is critical to keep the Joint Strike Fighter on schedule and on cost. This is the time to make the transition from F-22 to F-35 production. Within the next few years, we will begin work on the sixth-generation capabilities necessary for future air dominance.

In other words, let's just switch assembly lines and keep the contractor money flowing.

Gates' budget isn't necessarily bad, and I was heartened by President Obama's statement in his economic speech today that it was a good start but "we can do more." But the outpourings of praise just seem to me misplaced. Ultimately, Gates is protecting the bloated military budget.

But Only A Step

You have to consider this a victory for the Gates/Obama effort to radically shift expenditures in the Defense Department.

Bloomberg reported over the weekend that Levin is bullish on the proposal. "It's the right direction," Levin said. "This is how can we be armed more effectively at a more affordable cost."

Levin added that the committee would tackle the plan several weeks from now, starting with testimony from outside experts. In the meantime, he's taking issue with the claims of certain Republicans that Gates and the Obama administration are trying to gut the defense department.

"Secretary Gates is not going to disarm America," Levin said. "President Obama is not going to disarm America. The question is: how can we be effectively armed?"

I agree with Levin's assessment while saying once again that this is only a step, and would not address the profound inequity in the budget between defense and non-defense discretionary spending. We do not need more weapons of mass destruction when that money could be channeled into clean energy or health care.

That said, I do agree with David Axe that the claims about 95,000 jobs being supported by the F-22 is completely bogus, and a symbol of what garbage reformers have to deal with to make progress in this area.

Problem is, that 95,000 number counts indirect employment at firms for whom the F-22 program is just one of many clients. And it also counts Lockheed assembly workers who are in high demand for other aviation projects. In fact, ending Raptor production today might not result in a single unemployed aerospace worker.

Consider Lockheed’s plant in Meridian, Mississippi:

“As far as the facility here in Meridian is concerned, there are only about 20 workers devoted to the manufacturing of the tail assembly on the Raptor,” [plant manager Joe] Mercado added. “That is out of a total work force of almost 200 people. I don’t mean to lessen the importance their jobs mean to the families of those 20 people. It is very possible we could transition those workers to the C-130 product line, which is the major contract we have. But would the loss of the Raptor contract cripple us here in Meridian? No.”

It’s the same across the U.S. aerospace industry. A year ago the industry was worried about huge labor shortages. Shutting down the Raptor line would see thousands of workers snapped up for active production lines churning out F-16s, F-35s, C-130s and modernized C-5s for Lockheed, not to mention the prospect that industry rivals Boeing and Northrop might lure Lockheed workers for their own active production lines for the F-15, F/A-18 and others.

I personally wouldn't have a problem with losing some production jobs, or shifting them to building high speed rail cars. But the misinformation really grates on me.

Why Increasing The Pentagon Budget Isn't Real Change

For what it's worth, I thought Joe Sestak did an admirable job explaining why we need to change funding of the military based on the wars we fight and the threats we face, not based on the threat of a USSR that doesn't exist.



Which is fine, but he dances around the larger point that, for example, we don't NEED 187 F-22 fighters, which is the level AFTER this shift in emphasis in the Pentagon budget. I would go further and hint that we don't need troops based in 130 countries either, unless we are planning a major imperial expansion anytime soon. Similarly, Robert Gates explained, to his credit, that we don't need each armed service to have duplicative machinery and personnel when fighting jointly in a theater, but he nonetheless has increased the Pentagon budget even when accounting for this duplication, or at least being mindful of it for the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review.

Now, Matthew Yglesias makes a moderately compelling argument that you have to crawl before you can walk and walk before you can run, on this issue.

I would urge progressives who are having trouble getting themselves excited about this fight to recognize two points. One is that it really is nice to reorient a given quantity of military spending in more useful directions even if it doesn’t lead to cuts in the headline number. But the other is that if you ever do want to see further-reaching reform, we need to pass something like this budget first. It’s a key political test of whether it’s even possible to defy what the defense contractors and the joint chiefs want. If that does prove possible, then in years to come many things are possible, including a long-term trajectory that has defense declining as a percent of GDP. If it’s not possible then nothing is possible, and no future president will tackle it.

I recognize the first point and strongly disagree with the second, especially in light of the initial reaction. Conservatives and those who want to protect their parochial interests were ALWAYS going to characterize this as a cut. They know they can score political points off of it, and furthermore they have sufficiently brainwashed the media into believing that military spending is magic and doesn't affect the budget. In this way, Republicans can very easily call spending on giant weapons programs stimulus after arguing for months that federal spending isn't stimulative. They have wired the political establishment to orient themselves this way. Heck, they have media embeds who extoll the virtues of various weapons systems in the media without having to disclose how they profit off of them.

That being the case, why would anyone want to have this fight TWICE? If you're going to provoke the reaction that your Administration is cutting military spending, why not actually cut military spending in the process? This is a familiar Democratic technocrat argument, where they argue for a half-measure and a go-slow approach because we'll have the upper hand on talking points. "See, it's really an INCREASE!" And thus progress gets delayed and eventually denied.

It may hold that the Obama Administration doesn't actually want to cut military spending, which is my view, based on the fact that as a candidate, the President consistently said that he would increase the budget. While I appreciate the logic behind transformation and the need for more efficiently orienting our military toward actual things that could happen, I don't appreciate so-called progressives assuring me that this is some step toward a less insane balance in the military budget as a percentage of GDP. There's no evidence for that whatsoever, and it strikes me as the typical Democratic skittishness to actually embrace real change.

Gates v. The Military Industrial Complex... or Just Building a New One?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a budget recommendation that is shocking in its sweeping change, extremely unusual for the Pentagon's go-along, get-along approach to military contracting over the past 50 years or so. Robert Farley summarizes.

1. No more F-22s.
2. Replacement Air Force bomber delayed indefinitely.
3. Ballistic missile defense funding leans toward the Navy.
4. Aircraft carrier acquisition slowed, with the fleet eventually dropping to 10 carriers.
5. Next generation cruiser (CGX) delayed indefinitely.
6. VH-71 Presidential helicopter dead.
7. No more than three DDG-1000, and maybe only one.
8. Future Combat Systems funding slashed.

Farley says "This is why Bob Gates is still secretary of defense; Obama didn't believe that such cuts would be possible under a Democratic secretary." Perhaps so. And I agree with a lot of it; the F-22 is obselete in the context of current wars, for example. Cold War-era weapons systems have no place in the modern military. These cuts aren't THAT deep - missile defense still gets about $1 billion, for example - but they are significant.

But let's consider these "cuts" fully - they would not represent an overall scaling down of the Pentagon budget, but a lateral move into a forward-looking belief that the wars of the future will be counter-insurgencies and not wars of territory. I agree with Noah Schachtman that this makes a certain amount of sense, as major weapons programs are useless in such combat missions, while warm bodies are at a premium. I see this as an effort to SAVE the military budget, not slash it. While it makes sense to focus on funding the services needed for the wars we actually fight, in the final analysis the total budget still swamps the rest of the world many times over, troops are still based in 130 countries, and the Pentagon still dwarfs the rest of the budget on discretionary spending. It seems to me like this is trading one set of contractors for another, in a fashion. That's why those who represent the counter-insurgency faction of the military are thrilled.

There may be savings in the acquisitions and the contracting process in this request - I certainly hope so. And Gates' comment that "this is a reform budget" gives cause for optimism. In addition, with lots of this budget devoted to health care and veteran's services, perhaps engaging in less wars will drop costs substantially, in ways that could not be done while building giant weapons systems. But I'm not seeing much of a challenge to the idea that military budget must be outsized relative to the overall budget forever. And a perusal of the Congressional reaction to this recommendation is pretty telling:

"Secretary Gates has set out major changes to the defense budget based on changed assumptions about the wars our military must be prepared to fight. This is a good faith effort, and I appreciate the hard work and thoughtful consideration Secretary Gates and his staff put into these proposals.

"However, the buck stops with Congress, which has the critical Constitutional responsibility to decide whether to support these proposals. In the weeks ahead, my colleagues and I will carefully consider these proposals and look forward to working with Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen as we prepare the Fiscal Year 2010 defense authorization act."

In other words, nice budget, now move over while I mark it up.

Significantly, John McCain seems to be on the side of reform. Jim Webb said this: "The secretary's announcement today is highly unorthodox ... Secretary Gates has proposed funding increases, reductions, deferrals, and cancellations in numerous defense programs. In the absence of a more detailed description of the strategic underpinnings justifying his funding priorities--including an assessment of the level of risk posed to U.S. national security interests--it is difficult to evaluate them in isolation."

The weapons contractor industry will be quick to strike against this budget as well, and almost for that reason alone, I see value in Gates' product. But it's hard to see this as much more than a juggling of numbers in what remains too high a budget for war.

...Predictable blather from James Inhofe:

"I cannot believe what I heard today," Inhofe said in a statement. "President Obama is disarming America. Never before has a president so ravaged the military at a time of war."

Yes, "ravaged" them by eliminating weapons systems that aren't being used in this war. Sadly, such demagoguery is likely to work.

Bipartisan Military Spenders

Here's yet more examples why Obama's fight to end wasteful military spending and corrupt federal contracts is going to be so difficult, because in a very real sense it means taking on the heart of the Washington establishment itself.

When President Obama promised Wednesday to attack defense spending that he considers wasteful and inefficient, he opened a fight with key lawmakers from his own party.

It was Democrats who stuffed an estimated $524 million in defense earmarks that the Pentagon did not request into the 2008 appropriations bill, about $220 million more than Republicans did, according to an independent estimate. Of the 44 senators who implored Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in January to build more F-22 Raptors -- a fighter conceived during the Cold War that senior Pentagon officials say is not suited to probable 21st-century conflicts -- most were Democrats.

And last July, when the Navy's top brass decided to end production of their newest class of destroyers -- in response to 15 classified intelligence reports highlighting their vulnerability to a range of foreign missiles -- seven Democratic senators quickly joined four Republicans to demand a reversal. They threatened to cut all funding for surface combat ships in 2009.

Within a month, Gates and the Navy reversed course and endorsed production of a third DDG-1000 destroyer, at a cost of $2.7 billion.

I think the whole earmark "problem" is completely overblown, distorting because many of the earmarks are worthwhile projects, and overall they represent a tiny fraction of the overall budget. But it's undeniable that Democrats and Republicans are heavily invested in the military-industrial complex, just as much as defense contractors are invested in them. That's just a fact.

Democrats may talk about it differently, not as much about the need for a "strong national defense" but about the jobs these projects bring to their districts or their states. Either way, it's a symbol of the same corruption. Weapons producers give lots of money to politicians, politicians make sure they get lots of business from the government. And because large weapons systems like the F-22 Raptor are spread out among 44 states, there is enough support to basically maintain the status quo. There's also a sunk cost problem, when billions have already been spent on a lot of these useless programs. Some of them aren't even requested by the Defense Department.

Still, there is hope. When Raymond Odierno cancels contracts on bases in Iraq, you get the sense that the military is coming around to the need to keep down costs. Now we have to get Congress to think the same way.

Can't Beat That Military Industrial Complex

There are some conflicting stories about what the post-stimulus world means for the Pentagon. Today's New York Times made it seem like they were coming around to the reality of smaller budgets and more oversight:

Having signed into law nearly $800 billion in new spending, President Obama will now be under pressure to identify at least some budget cuts — and the Pentagon may be particularly vulnerable.

Mr. Obama is set to release his first budget proposal on Feb. 26. After years in which military budgets have soared to record levels, Pentagon officials are already preparing at a minimum to pare back, with a particular eye to slashing weapons programs that have suffered significant cost overruns.

Some Democrats are pressing for much broader cuts in military spending, with Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the Financial Services Committee, having called for a 25 percent reduction in the Pentagon budget.

While such a drastic reduction is unlikely during a time of two wars and a recession, several high-dollar, high-tech weapons systems will be under the most scrutiny.

Indeed, despite the best efforts of military-industrial complex mouthpieces like Mark Bowden, it appeared that the F-22 would be one of the first dodo bird weapons systems to go. There is no need for future investments in the system, especially since air superiority is the least of our worries in a 21st-century military environment. But an emerging fight has broken out about it, one that uses the rhetoric of jobs:

When it comes to the F 22 Raptor, the administration is facing a March 1 deadline to decide how many more F22s to order. Lockheed is supposed to deliver the last of the current batch of 181 on order in 2011 [...] So not surprisingly there's a lot of lobbying going on to keep the F 22 rolling. Northrop and Lockheed Martin are lobbying heavily to keep the plane in production and there's a large press availability this week where reporters can sit in simulators and learn all about the 95,000 jobs the plane's advocates say are at state. Any state where there's work related to the Raptor is lobbying for it. "With rising unemployment, we need to make sure that we're not making a knee-jerk reaction and we keep this program going strong," Keith Scott, president of the Baltimore County Chamber of Commerce told the Baltimore Sun. Our point is, No. 1, this preserves jobs, and No. 2, it is immediate. You don't have to develop anything," Lawson said. "This is 'shovel ready.' "

According to the Los Angeles Times, the F-22 program is directly responsible for 25,000 jobs at Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin and its major suppliers. But Lockheed officials say when jobs from sub-suppliers are added in, the F-22 program maintains 95,000 jobs in 44 states. Among the firms helping Lockheed in Washington is Public Strategies, home to George W. Bush media adviser Mark McKinnon. In Congress, prominent senators from Ted Kennedy to Judd Gregg to Dianne Feinstein signed a letter back in January urging then President Elect Obama to keep the F22 going. Not surprisingly there's a website, www.preserveraptorjobs.com that's just part of the lobbying campaign being waged by the Lockheed, Boeing and other suppliers of the jet fighter. We'll know soon whether their efforts have been successful.

Via Spencer Ackerman, I'd put money down that the lobbyists will win this one.

Remember earlier this month, when the White House's Office of Management and Budget told the Pentagon to cap its forthcoming fiscal 2010 budget at $527 billion, excluding the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- an increase from the $513 billion appropriated in the final year of the Bush administration? But because the figure was lower than a $584 billion Bush-era Pentagon wishlist for fiscal 2010, people started portraying the increase as a cut? Well, Josh Rogin at CQ reports (behind a firewall, alas) that OMB and the Pentagon have agreed to an even greater increase: $537 billion for the coming fiscal year.

The new topline figure is $10 billion greater than guidance President Obama's administration gave to the Pentagon only last month. The increase reflects the effort to incorporate some items previously found in supplemental war funding budgets, the sources said, but does not cover the cost of ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will still require additional funding above the base request next fiscal year.

That'll creep up and up and up, I suppose. And when the "fiscal responsibility summit" comes around, don't expect the participating Blue Dogs to sound the alarm against wasteful defense spending. That kind of spending is magic.

We will never get our fiscal house in order, as it were, as long as we needlessly spend more money on the military than any other nation on Earth combined.