Budget Bullshit

It's bad enough when the Heritage Foundation decides to lie with statistics about the defense budget. It's the usual conservative argument saying that we need to spend 4% or more on defense, because otherwise we're spending less than since 9/11 (gasp!!). It's not surprising to see the National Review hawk this falsehood. Worse when the usually reliable Defense Tech decides to buy into the lie. John Noonan from OpFor writes this post for Defense Tech:

I'll try to stay off my soapbox, but two points are worth mentioning. First, as noted by McNeal, is that the primary function of the federal government is to provide for the common defense -- not health care, green initiatives (readers: please don't try to combine global warming projections into security, as some are wont to do. It's lame) and corporate bailouts.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, is the fact that our powerful military exists to prevent a war as much as it exists to win a war. Si vis pacem, para bellum, if you will. One can argue that our strategic nuclear deterrent accomplishes this well enough, but I'm not convinced. I'd rather spend 5%-6% of our GDP on ensuring we never have to suffer through another WWI or WWII. 

Fortunately, we have Ben Friedman at CATO to set them straight on budget issues and statistics.

It’s true that defense spending will probably decline as a percentage of GDP, assuming the economy recovers. But that’s because GDP grows. Ours is more than six times bigger than it was in 1950.  Meanwhile, we spend more on defense in real, inflation adjusted terms, than we did then, at the height of the Cold War. The denoninator has grown faster than the numerator. 

By saying that defense spending needs to grow with GDP to be “level,” you are arguing for an annual increase in defense spending without saying so directly. That’s the point, of course.

To be straight with readers, charts that show defense spending as a percentage of GDP should either show GDP growth over time or include a line that shows defense spending in real terms. Otherwise they fail to demonstrate that the decline in defense spending as a percentage of GDP is a consequence of growing GDP, not lower spending.

Don't buy into the lie, John. Think before you buy into the Heritage Foundation's bullshit arguments. You'll be helping the Defense Department by forcing it to use its hundreds of billions in research, development, and acquisition better instead of suggesting that we flood DoD with more unnecessary funds.

Comments

[J. Tyler Ballance]

Today's Navy has more Admirals than it has ships.
The other services are even more bloated at the top.

The same is true among the senior enlisted ranks of E8 and E9, where technically trained personnel are mostly removed from their area of expertise and pushed into administrative or ceremonial jobs.

We need to restructure our military so that there are no more flag officers than major areas of operation. For the Navy, we should have no more Admirals than we have fleets. All of the other major commands can, and should be headed by O6 and O7 ranks.

The Chinese have made no secret of their intention of destroying us at some point in the future. There will be no time to recover from another Pearl Harbor. Our military needs to remain ready at all times. A major part of ensuring readiness is to strip the military of non-essential, non-combat functions and for politicians to stop using our military as a minority employment program.

WE MUST RETURN TO A MERIT BASED SOCIETY and this is especially true for our military. Selection and advancement must not continue to be gamed, to force selection of incompetent minority and female officers and NCOs, so that the politicians can say that our military "reflects racial/gender proportions in society."

Our military is not a social program. Our military is our only line of defense against the belligerent forces in this world. We, as citizens, deserve to have our very best personnel in our military and we must insist that monies spent in the Department of Defense are only allocated based on MERIT.

STOP using our military for social engineering experiments.

[Scathsealgaire]

I have to agree about Defence Tech and the gullability they have shown about the budget increase (or not lack of as they believe). It is sad when reporters and bloggers don't remember that politicians are liars and statictics lie even more than politicians.