Appropriate Appropriations

All this austerity hysteria has finally gotten to the point where something actually useful might happen:  reining in defense spending.

Liberal Democrats for years have called for cuts to the massive defense budget to no avail. Even after Democrats regained control of Congress in 2007, their few attempts at reining in defense spending have proven futile, partly because of opposition from centrist Democrats hawkish on defense issues.

Now that opposition is softening amid rising concern about the nation's fiscal future and the fact that defense makes up more than half the country’s discretionary spending.

“We are going to have to adopt the philosophy that nothing can be off the table,” said Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho), one of the first members of the class of 2008 to be admitted into the Blue Dog Coalition. “And that is increasingly becoming the dominant view of the Blue Dogs.”

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), a centrist who is the House's top defense appropriator, believes his panel can reduce the Pentagon's budget top line somewhat without affecting military readiness, according to Dicks's chief of staff, George Behan.

“He expects that the Defense subcommittee will be recommending a bill that represents a modest reduction from the amount requested by the president,” Behan said.

The good news is maybe we won't have to axe so many social programs if we get rid of military pork.  The better news is that the Republicans will probably throw a screaming hissy fit over this, proving they were never serious about deficits anyway.  The long, long, long shot is that somebody might ask "Hey do you know how much money we can free up if we weren't fighting these stupid wars?"

I wouldn't count on the last one, but the other two are a pretty distinct possibility.