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The New York Times has posted a handy tool for calculating savings
from the Pentagon’s budget over the next ten years. I went through the
exercise, and my plan resulted in cuts of $1.144 trillion over ten
years. Had I checked all of the boxes in the Times’s calculator, it would have generated savings of up to $1.4 trillion.
Though I support reform of the the military retirement system, I
think some of these proposals go too far (they would have saved up to
$86.5 billion). We should continue to spend money recruiting the very
best force, comprised of the most-qualified men and women ($5 billion),
and we might find it hard to do that if/when the economy improves.
Tuition assistance is a key factor driving recruitment, and I wouldn’t
scale that back ($5 billion). (Full disclosure: I attended college on an
NROTC scholarship.) We need the best possible services for families,
and I could foresee problems with closing elementary and secondary
schools on bases ($10 billion). And I have no particular quarrel with
military bands ($0.2 billion). My ideal military will be smaller and
more elite, but likely better compensated than today’s force. And
retirees would continue to receive many benefits not enjoyed by their
fellows who never served, but we should experiment with ways to control
costs. The key take-away, and the one stressed in the accompanying story
by Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, is that it is possible to
reduce military spending, and the resulting force will still be larger
and more capable than any conceivable combination of rivals.
A few additional observations:
1) The Times’s calculator cites my and Ben Friedman’s
contribution to the Sustainable Defense Task Force report, “Debts,
Deficits, and Defense,” but the main part of the report was the work of
the entire task force, and they deserve proper credit. I am particularly
grateful to Carl Conetta and Charles Knight of the Project for Defense
Alternatives.
2) Ben and I published a stand-alone report
a few months later with some numbers drawn from the SDTF report, and
with some additional detail surrounding our proposals that were not
endorsed by all SDTF members. Our savings were calculated against the
baseline from fiscal year 2010, and these numbers are now a bit dated.
3) When I hit the submit button comparing my choices with others who
participated in the exercise, I discovered 80 percent of respondents
supported the plan to reduce forces in Europe and Asia. That sort of
systematic restructuring is necessary to ensure that we don’t impose
undue burdens on what will necessarily be a smaller force. As I have said repeatedly, if we are going to spend less, we must expect our troops to do less, and expect other countries to do more.
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