National Security Threats vs. Defense Cuts

[Geee]

Gatestone Institute:

Especially as ISIS, Iran and others openly threaten the United States, it seems increasingly urgent for this administration and the next to determine the level of defense spending America should support.

 

A new study by the American Enterprise Institute, (AEI), authored primarily by defense experts Tom Donnelly and Mackenzie Eaglen initially supports using as a minimum baseline the defense five year plan proposed in 2012, by then Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.

 

Unfortunately, too often in Washington a discussion of defense spending frequently defaults into arguments over whether major tax rate increases must be part of the bargain. This failure is in part due to policy proposals to increase defense spending often being linked to with other proposals -- to cut tax rates, reform entitlements and balance the budget. Combined, these proposals are often described as unworkable and radical, and are thus easily dismissed.

 

A debate over how much to "tax the rich" lends itself to easy demagoguery. And that attracts politicians and their supporters to call for the redistribution of income. In short, if everything in the drive-by media newsroom can default to the progressive, Marxist narrative, it will.

 

In addition, the nation's media, who seem to assume that Americans are weary of war, rather than that they are desperately frustrated at being infantilized and lied to, rarely discuss what defense programs need more investment. If anything, they discuss what defense programs should be reduced or killed. For example, Keith Payne, the President of the National Institute of Public Policy in Fairfax, Virginia and a former top DOD official, told a conference on September 17, 2015 that during the past few years, media stories advocating cutting nuclear deterrent programs outnumbered those pushing for modernization by more than 200 to 1.