Mac Thornberry

Add Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) to that list. But Thornberry — who is also on the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees and is vice chair of the Subcommittee on Emerging threats — one-upped his colleagues yesterday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show yesterday. Thornberry said DOD can live with the initial $350 billion, but if Congress cuts anything beyond that, the military goes kaput:

HEWITT: So Mac Thornberry, if you look at this budget that we just passed, this deficit reduction that we just passed, $350 billion dollars from Defense over ten years, and another $600 billion coming up. Is that how we fund facing future threats?

THORNBERRY: No, of course not. The first cuts are something that the Pentagon says they can live with, it’s going to be hard, but it’s kind of in the ballpark of what folks have been talking about for a while. The second cuts, if they were to happen, would be devastating. You simply could not operate the military with that second round of cuts. And the assumption is that they’re not going to happen, that there’ll be a way out of it. But it concerns me that they would even be taking Defense hostage in these budget negotiations.

Frightening. But in reality, under the deal, security spending is capped at $684 billion in 2012. And according the Center on Budget on Policy Priorities, defense spending will be reduced by $55 billion per year for ten years starting in 2014 if the trigger takes effect:

A defense sequestration of $55 billion would be imposed in a similar manner. … For 2014-2021, the cuts would occur through reductions in the statutory caps on total defense funding, with the Appropriation Committees deciding how best to allocate the allowed funding. … A defense sequestration of $55 billion also would represent a cut of roughly 9 percent in defense programs if military personnel funding is exempt from sequestration, and about a 7 percent cut if it is not.

So defense will have to deal with 7 to 9 percent cuts per year for a decade if the trigger takes effect, which amounts to around $850 billion in total defense spending reductions in ten years under that scenario. Various estimates have calculated that defense can withstand further cuts beyond that and still maintain military superiority and address the country’s security threats. So yes, despite Thornberry’s fearmongering, the military will still be able to operate.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is bringing out a full court press to prevent further Defense Department cuts beyond the $350 billion in reductions that are part of the debt ceiling deal. Panetta, with help from various hawkish pundits and op-ed writers, is doing all he can to present the U.S. defense budget as a completely justifiable expenditure to ensure American security and balance various strategic rivals.

Panetta and others have said Congress should not take from the Pentagon’s coffers because of threats from Iran, North Korea, and China. Indeed all of these countries have shown a commitment to military spending and U.S. forces are often seen as balancing Chinese and North Korean regional ambitions.

But absolute defense spending for the U.S., China, Iran, and North Korea reveals that U.S. expenditures are dramatically more than any of its rivals combined. See the chart below:

U.S. defense expenditures are six times the combined defense expenditures of Washington’s major strategic rivals. While Panetta is attempting to preserve his department’s budget — and it’s safe to assume that most government agencies are eager to protect their budgets from major cuts — his warning that defense cuts might hamper America’s ability to “make sure that rising powers understand that the United States still has a strong defense,” comes off as a fabricated scare tactic.

Numerous examples of defense spending cuts ranging from $400 billion over the next four years to $1 trillion over the next decade have been proposed by politicians and experts from across the ideological spectrum. There is an emerging consensus that the U.S. has a significant military advantage over its nearest rivals and defense spending can be reduced without hurting U.S. national security.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) didn't disclose his conflicts of interest.

Defense spending is not the reason for our more than $14 trillion in national debt. Nor should it be identified as a primary revenue source to relieve the nation’s fiscal troubles. There is indeed room for efficiency — but cutting for the sake of cutting is a dangerous proposition.

It is plainly untrue to say that the Defense Department isn’t a major driver of our deficit. After all, defense spending makes up the bulk of the government’s discretionary budget.

While there is nothing wrong with Politico publishing a piece advocating against cutting the defense budget, the paper did make a major omission by failing to include a crucial fact: Hunter’s top campaign contributors all come from the defense industry. As campaign finance data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics shows, half of the top 20 corporate contributors to his campaign are defense contractors:

Politico and all other media outlets should disclose these conflicts of interest when discussing this issue. ThinkProgress asked Politico to comment, but we have yet to receive a response.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta yesterday continued his vocal push back against the general consensus that significant cuts in military spending have to be part of the solution to the debt and deficit. During a press conference at the Pentagon, Panetta said further cuts beyond the $350 billion in defense spending reductions that are part of the debt ceiling deal would have disastrous consequences. He called the so-called “trigger” — $1.5 trillion in across-the-board cuts if Congress can’t agree on further reductions — a “doomsday mechanism.”

Yet Panetta didn’t really say why. One reporter asked if he is drawing up contingency plans should the trigger take effect, but Panetta said he hasn’t even begun “to consider what would happen” in that case. If he hasn’t considered it, how does he know it’s a “doomsday mechanism”?

Later, another reporter asked Panetta to identify the threats that justify his vision for military spending. Yet, again, Panetta was short on details:

PANETTA: Terrorism networks still remain a threat out there. Even though we’ve badly damaged al-Qaeda and their ability to conduct attacks in this country, the fact is that they still remain a threat. A threat coming out of Yemen, a threat coming out of Somalia and elsewhere. And that means that we have to continue the pressure to deal with the threat of al-Qaida. [...]

We’ve got two wars that we’re still dealing with in Afghanistan and Iraq. … In addition to that, we have the threats that come from Iran and North Korea. … And in addition to that, then the responsibility is, obviously, to be able to project our power in the world, in order to make sure that rising powers understand that the United States still has a strong defense.

Watch it:

First, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t even considered in the Pentagon’s baseline budget. And indeed, terrorism, Iran, and North Korea remain threats and the United States should continue to “project” its military power around the world. But Panetta never said what specific effects cuts to the defense budget would have. For example, the U.S. currently spends more on its military than the next 14 biggest spenders combined. Of those 14 countries, 12 are U.S. allies (six from NATO) and none are Iran or North Korea. How does the threat from Iran and North Korea justify that spending?

In fact, the Defense Department could easily make reductions beyond $350 billion over the next decade. Last year, the Sustainable Defense Task Force (SDTF) — which was chaired by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and staffed by “scholars from a broad ideological spectrum” — identified nearly $1 trillion in military spending cuts. Even Republican Senator Tom Coburn said last month that cutting $1 trillion from the Pentagon budget over the next 10 years would not be “super hard.” And CAP’s Larry Korb, Laura Conley and Alex Rothman identified $400 billion in cuts over the next 4 years.

Those who advocate for smart reductions in military spending have offered specifics on how to get there. Yet instead of countering with specifics of their own, defense spenders use scare tactics like warning that cuts would, as Panetta said yesterday, “do real damage to our security, our troops and their families.”