Super Congress is shaping up to be the battle of "Defense Spending vs. Everything Else" according to Roll Call.
The Military-Industrial-Complex has come out swinging. Marion Blakey, head of the Aerospace Industries Association, a "premier trade association representing the nation's major aerospace and defense manufacturers", issued a statement in response to Pentagon budget cuts set to trigger in the debt deal plan. She writes:
The cuts to defense proposed in the ‘trigger’ deal are so draconian that it’s hard to believe they are even on the table...
The $600 billion in additional cuts to defense that are part of the so-called ‘trigger’ deal are a dangerous approach that could compromise our national security for decades to come...
National security funding should not be treated as a piggy bank for deficit reduction, while the real drivers of our fiscal problems, such as entitlement spending, are off the table. Defense spending must be consistent with our national interests and real military needs.
Do Americans need to be reminded that our current military spending is neither consistent with our "national interests", nor meeting our "real military needs"? A reminder of our current defense spending levels:
Source: Center for American Progress, A Return to Responsibility (pdf)
And compared to other big military spenders around the world:
Source: The Economist, The biggest military spenders.
So, it has come to this — America's own M-I-C is now at war with Americans. They have their champions on Wall Street. They have their champions on K Street. They have their champions in our government. Such as Sen. Joe Lieberman:
We can’t protect these entitlements and also have the national defense we need to protect us in a dangerous world while we’re at war with Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11 and will be for a long time to come.
Or, Defense War Secretary Leon Panetta:
This potential deep cut in defense spending is not meant as policy. Rather, it is designed to be unpalatable to spur responsible, balanced deficit reduction and avoid misguided cuts to our security... This outcome would be completely unacceptable to me as secretary of defense, the president, and to our nation's leaders.
And if anonymous sources are credible, quite possibliy the president:
One senior official said that the president is not interested in cutting defense spending that much, but by putting defense on the table, the cuts ensure that the 12 members of the special committee — especially the Republicans — will have impetus to reach deals on spending cuts, tax reforms and entitlement reforms.
The only purpose remaining for Americans is to pay for our war machine. Any thought of scaling it back is "draconian" with deep cuts are "misguided" and "unacceptable". If the M-I-C has their way, the "draconian" cuts are going to made to America's social safety net in order to keep us safe with military spending. As The Progressive noted:
When it comes to war, the U.S. treasury vault is always wide open. But when it comes to giving people universal health care or ensuring their Social Security or creating good jobs or wiping out poverty, why there’s no combination to the lock.
Ours is a war and a Wall Street economy. Everything else is immaterial.