{"id":954,"date":"2013-02-08T15:36:08","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T21:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=954"},"modified":"2013-02-08T15:36:08","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T21:36:08","slug":"defense-spending-hasnt-been-cut-by-600-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/defense-spending-hasnt-been-cut-by-600-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense Spending Hasn\u2019t Been Cut by $600 Billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tad DeHaven, Cato.org
\n Click here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

Beltway politicians like to pretend that smaller spending increases<\/em> amount to spending \u201ccuts.\u201d As Dan Mitchell has pointed out numerous times (see here<\/a> for one example), that\u2019s baseline budgeting baloney. Now that the 2011 Budget Control Act\u2019s spending caps are in place, politicians are making an even more ridiculous claim: the so-called \u201ccuts\u201d have already<\/em> occurred.<\/p>\n

The caps apply to spending over ten fiscal years \u2013 the last year being 2021. We are obviously not in the year 2021, so it\u2019s impossible for the so-called \u201ccuts\u201d to have already been implemented. Yet here are two examples from a recent Politico<\/em> article<\/a> where politicians suggest that to be the case:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people that think we need to cut more,\u201d House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) acknowledged in an interview. McKeon said he\u2019s been pushing back against budget hawks in the GOP conference by pointing to the nearly $600 billion in spending cuts that the Pentagon has already absorbed in recent years \u2014 and that\u2019s before sequestration would even begin.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s spending that can be taken out of all departments,\u201d said freshman Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.). \u201cAnd I\u2019ve talked to people from the Pentagon. There\u2019s just areas that, yeah, we can pull back a little more, even though they did their $470 billion already. They said it hurt, but we possibly could.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ll cut Rep. Yoho a little slack because the article indicates that he\u2019s open to cutting defense. Rep. McKeon, on the other hand, deserves no such leniency. (Why McKeon said $600 billion and Yoho $470 billion I have no idea.)<\/p>\n

The following chart illustrates why it is ridiculous to act as if smaller future increases in projected spending<\/em> amount to realized<\/em> spending cuts. The chart shows the Congressional Budget Office\u2019s August 2001 baseline estimate of defense spending from 2002 to 2011 versus the actual outlays:<\/p>\n

\"defense_spending_2001_baseline_vs_actual<\/p>\n

The combined difference turned out to be $1.8 trillion.<\/p>\n

But, you might respond, those estimates were published a month before the attack on September 11th, 2001, so of course they turned out to be way off!<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s my point<\/em>. With the exception of Keynesian economists, no one can predict the future. All it will take is another major terrorist attack or another war and it\u2019s adios spending caps. I would argue that such unfortunate scenarios are a distinct possibility given the Beltway crowd\u2019s love for empire, but I\u2019ll leave that topic to Cato\u2019s foreign policy experts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tad DeHaven, Cato.org Click here for original article Beltway politicians like to pretend that smaller spending increases amount to spending \u201ccuts.\u201d As Dan Mitchell has pointed out numerous times (see here for one example), that\u2019s baseline budgeting baloney. Now that the 2011 Budget Control Act\u2019s spending caps are in place, politicians are making an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[166],"class_list":["post-954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-defense-budget"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/defense_spending_2001_baseline_vs_actual.jpg?fit=538%2C354&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":956,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954\/revisions\/956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}