Trade-off da – gdi 2011 1 Earth Science D/A 2

Defense—No Link—Congress

The House of Representatives will soon be debating the new Department of Defense (DoD) appropriations bill. It’s expensive - $649 billion, close to another post-World War II high. The bill covers almost all of DoD’s expenses for fiscal year 2012 - both routine expenses, such as basic payroll, training and weapons acquisition (known as the “base” budget), and war spending - for Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Pretending reform and frugality, members of the House Appropriations Committee - Democrats and Republicans alike - packed the bill with pork and gimmicks. The bill would spend $17 billion more than last year. But House appropriators are calling this increase a cut because it’s less than the original defense budget request President Obama sent to Congress in February. That request was made irrelevant by the president’s subsequent decision to reduce long-term security spending by $400 billion. In addition to pretending frugality, the committee apes reform. It explicitly denies the existence of earmarks in the bill, saying in its own committee report, “Neither the bill nor the report contains any congressional earmarks, limited tax benefits, or limited tariff benefits as defined in clause 9 of rule XXI.” I found many earmarks.

While some may question the importance of NASA, Brooks noted that the Constitution itself establishes the military as a top priority. Even as funding for other federal programs has been slashed in recent years, defense spending continued to grow. The consensus is that those easy-spending days are drawing to a close. "In light of our fiscal difficulties, all departments and programs are subject to reductions in funding," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, said in a written statement. Benjamin Friedman, a research fellow at the conservative Cato Institute, said that for all the Republican rhetoric about cutting budgets, he doesn't foresee large cuts in defense. "It seems likely that we're entering a period where the defense budget will at least go down a little," he said. "It doesn't seem at the moment that there will be big cuts.”