One Good Thing About The Financial Crisis

...it may do what Washington politicians refused to do: cut defense spending.

In the fiscal year that just ended, the U.S. spent $694.2 billion on defense, up 52 percent from the 2000 defense budget in constant dollars. (That year, the department spent $292 billion.) The fiscal 2008 total includes $514.2 billion in the defense budget and another $180 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been financed through so-called "supplemental" budgets.

Eight years of borrowing to pay for the Iraq and Afghan wars, coupled with an aging baby boomer population, growing health care costs and a push to enlarge the Army, could force legislators to make tough decisions about which needs should take priority, and the next president to reassess how much the military can do.

Congress' decision earlier this month to approve a $700 billon bailout for the financial industry adds to the strain on the federal budget, and the stock market decline and the credit crunch could slow economic activity and eliminate jobs, which in turn could reduce tax revenues.

"How the U.S. government funds its military answers the question of: How committed it is to fighting these kinds of war?" said James Quinlivan, a senior military analyst and mathematician at the RAND Corporation.

The pressure is likely to be felt most acutely by the Army, the military's largest and most expensive branch, which is already strained by the war in Iraq and planning for another decade of sustained conflict. Both presidential candidates have called for more troops in Afghanistan while maintaining a substantial force in Iraq.

The Army plans to add about 30,000 soldiers by 2010, and expanding the force to 547,000 would cost at least $5 billion, according to Army estimates. Some internal estimates put the cost of repairing or replacing worn-out and damaged equipment and procuring new technology at another $150 billion a year.

Cuts will have to be made, period. To fund what either McSame or Obama want to accomplish, drastic cuts will have to be made.

Either the promises go or the guns and bombs do.