[Peace-discuss] Barney Frank: Tea Party people are helping us cut the military budget

[Robert Naiman]

“The Tea Party people are anti-military spending to a greater extent
than establishment Republicans and have a healthy dose of isolationism
thanks to American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan,’’ says
Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who has long pushed to
cut the defense budget. “On this issue, they were a positive force.’’

Now, The Next Battle
Joshua Green, Boston Globe, August 3, 2011
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/08/03/now_the_next_battle/

By any rational measure, the deal struck last weekend to raise the
debt ceiling - formally, the Budget Control Act of 2011 - is a victory
for conservatives and an incredible disappointment for Democrats.
President Obama initially sought a “clean’’ bill to raise the ceiling,
with no conditions attached. House Speaker John Boehner wanted to
include a deficit-cutting package composed of 85 percent spending cuts
and 15 percent tax increases. What the president signed was a
capitulation, and then some: It could amount to as much as $2.8
trillion, all cuts and no taxes. While it raises the debt ceiling, it
does nothing to stimulate the economy, help the jobless, or support
state and local governments.

But while conservatives are unquestionably the victors here, the deal
is set up in a way that will force them to confront a number of major
- and conflicting - policy priorities that they have usually been able
to muddy. This doesn’t offer much in terms of balance, but it will be
interesting to watch how they deal with them.

The biggest conflict is between the defense-oriented conservatives and
those who prize tax cuts above all else. Both groups are vital
Republican constituencies, whose animating issues are fundamentally
opposed to each other. It’s hard to build a robust and active military
while trying to shrink the size of government - wars and weapons
systems are costly and require tax revenue to pay for them.

Up until now, Republican leaders have usually managed to satisfy both
groups by pushing to cut taxes and increase military spending - that
is, by ignoring the bottom line and running up huge deficits. During
the George W. Bush administration, Dick Cheney captured this mindset
to perfection when he famously remarked, “Reagan proved that deficits
don’t matter.’’

But the process established under the debt deal will expose the
inherent tension between these competing factions, and could go a long
way toward resolving it. At first glance, the tax-cutters have won in
a rout. They didn’t get all they wanted - there’s no balanced budget
amendment or extension of the Bush tax cuts - but their interests
plainly prevailed. No one’s taxes will go up as a direct result of the
new law, and the initial $1 trillion in cuts is likely to include
hundreds of billions in military spending.

The second phase could cut even further. The law creates a bipartisan
commission charged with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in deficit
reduction over the next decade, and includes a trigger that will
automatically enact deep reductions in military spending if the
commission fails or deadlocks. It’s not yet clear what will go,
although Medicaid, Social Security, and veterans’ benefits are
exempted. But it is clear that most Republicans value lower taxes over
large military expenditures.

That is a marked change from recent history, and it derives from a
shift within the Republican Party on deficits. Conservatives like
Cheney always professed a commitment to balancing the budget - at
least in public - even though their actions often demonstrated
otherwise.

But the debt deal enshrines in law the very opposite of what Cheney
actually believed - it is founded on the premise that deficits do
matter, and matter enough to force Republicans (and some Democrats) to
finally confront their conflicting desires to cut taxes and increase
spending.

The fact that military expenditures are being sacrificed to keep tax
rates low reflects the new balance of power within the Republican
Party, one partly brought about by the failures of Cheney and the
defense crowd.

“The Tea Party people are anti-military spending to a greater extent
than establishment Republicans and have a healthy dose of isolationism
thanks to American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan,’’ says
Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who has long pushed to
cut the defense budget. “On this issue, they were a positive force.’’
[...]


--
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org