“Making the defense bill a place for political squabbling and pet crusades distracts from the important mission they have.”
Last Friday the House passed a defense budget. For a Congress that has accomplished very little meaningful legislation thus far, this is a good step, but it still shows problems. It included 30 billion more funding than initially planned but failed to please Trump and other hawks who believe much more is needed. They rejected a call to close bases, which would have saved money, and the bill also called climate change a “direct threat to national security” and required a report of the ten most vulnerable bases to climate change. The talk about climate change highlights the skewed priorities that prevent meaningful reform and reinvestment in the military and the dysfunction of the GOP.
Climate change is the boogey monster of the left. Leaving aside the lively debate over its veracity, this is still the domain of politicians and public policy. The defense bill should focus on the beans, bullets, and band-aids that help our soldiers fight. Making the defense bill a place for political squabbling and pet crusades distracts from the important mission they have.
More importantly, the bill doesn’t provide enough funding to fully reverse the erosion of the military when sequestration took effect in 2011. For example, Trump has called for an increase in ship building. But additional ships take many years to be funded and then built. So an immediate surge of funding is needed to have even a slightly larger navy by the end of his first term.
An important step in this goal could be additional funding from base closures. It’s estimated that closing additional bases would save at least 3 billion dollars. That is not a large sum in the 600 billion yearly funding for the military. But that is still an additional 10% of the 30 billion added in this defense bill. The military has said they don’t need the bases, and most Republicans agree that more funding for the military is good. I don’t know anybody who would want to increase their bottom line 10%.
But these bases are boons to the small towns and counties in which they are located. Essentially, the bases were saved because Republicans didn’t want to give up the pork in their district. It is not that hard to make the basic case to constituents that the military needs to better use its resources and consolidate bases.
The failure to do so is short sided and another example of how Republicans can’t get their act together. They claim to care about fiscal discipline and funding the military. But when they control the White House and Congress, they can’t work together, and Republican congressmen would rather talk about the climate and save their pork barrels.
The clock is ticking on Republicans passing meaningful legislation. Roughly two thirds of the year is past, and the summer recess is quickly approaching. The healthcare bill in the Senate is most likely dead as of early this week as Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Jerry Moran (Kan.) issued statements declaring that they would not vote for the revamped measure. Now they have a defense bill that seems more concerned with climate change rather than meaningful savings and increases in military spending.
The Republicans need to get their act together.
