Pentagon Cuts Maybe, but What Else?

By Jim Cason on 08/02/2011 @ 10:30 AM

Tags: budget, War Is Not the Answer

My colleague Ruth Flower has posted a great analysis of the debt limit legislation Congress will approve today. The bottom line as I see it is that although, as we at FCNL have been predicting, Congress could make some real cuts in Pentagon spending, the short term impact on our struggling economy, on people with out jobs and on state level priorities could be devastating.

Long term everyone agrees Congress needs to address the federal budget deficit. FCNL's Policy Statement says clearly that the nation needs to budget enough revenues to pay for what we spend. The real question is how to do that? The debate should be about what is the best strategy to restore economic growth (historically the real driver for deficit reduction) and how to ensure that federal spending choices reflect the moral values of our nation.

Although the deal approved by Congress does protect Pell grants and, potentially, some programs for the poor, in her analysis Ruth highlights some of the most dangerous cuts at a time when our economy is fragile and unemployment is high: "Programs like Head Start, community services block grants, most housing assistance, nutritional assistance for Women, Infants, and Children, community health programs and many programs for the elderly will face deep and serious budget cuts."

The Long Term

Reading Ruth's report and several other pieces of analysis, I'm left feeling that Congress has failed the nation... again. The legislation is divided in two stages, with some cuts in spending now (and no effort to raise new revenue) and then the threat of future automatic cuts if a committee established by Congress doesn't act before December of this year to make more cuts. As Ruth points out, this process is mysterious and history would suggest unlikely to succeed.

Assuming members of Congress don't agree on the second round of deficit reductions, then even more radical cuts in government spending will be implemented automatically. The good news is that this could include hundreds of billions of dollars in additional cuts to Pentagon spending (about $100 billion a year). As the Sustainable Defense Project has pointed out, such cuts and efforts to raise revenues not only possible but necessary. But the cuts are mostly scheduled to start several years from now and the Pentagon and its defenders in Congress from both major political parties are already mobilizing to prevent those cuts from every taking place.

The take away point is that all of our FCNL mobilizing with others to insist that Pentagon spending be cut is beginning to work. The real challenge is how to keep that lobbying work going in the next couple of years.

Yet this still a bad deal. The stage two cuts will concentrate on "entitlement" programs such as food assistance, health care and money for retirement. In effect, if these cuts take place, Congress will drive more people out of their homes and into the streets, make more families chose between food, housing, and other essentials, and do very little to address the long-term problems with our economy.

As Ruth and others have pointed out, there are obvious solutions. But neither Congress nor the president have been willing to embrace these solutions so far.

You can follow Ruth's analysis as we learn about this deal on our website.

More reading White House Fact Sheet on the Budget Deal

Center on Budget and Policy Priorites statement

A Terrible Deal says Washington Post Columnist