Republicans in Congress came out swinging against what they label as the Obama administration’s cuts to military spending in its new budget, specifically citing the threat North Korea’s missiles pose as a reason to preserve missile defense spending. A close read of the Pentagon’s weapon procurement plans, however, show an increase in spending to the missile defense programs most closely related to countering North Korea.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) made headlines on Thursday when he inadvertently revealed a still secret Defense Intelligence Agency asessment of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. In one segment of the DIA’s assessment, which was mistakenly labeled as unclassified in the copy provided to Congress, the Pentagon spy agency determined North Korea “has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles; however, the reliability will be low.”

Lamborn defended the disclosure after the meeting, as he was worried that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to fund missile defense:

“My whole goal in bringing this to light was to make sure we don’t cut missile defense spending,” the congressman said. “At the worst possible time, the President’s budget does exactly that.”

Republicans like Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) also seized on the North Korean crisis to attack the Obama administration’s proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget on Friday — despite the fact that baseline spending is actually up by $1 billion. And while missile defense spending is cut $550 million in the President’s proposal, those cuts are primarily due to cancelling the Medium Extended Air Defense System, which the Pentagon has said it doesn’t want. In fact, Lamborn’s specific worry so far as it relates to North Korea is concerned is demonstrably false.

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Defense industry-backed Republicans are so desperate to stave off the automatic military spending cuts that they’re trying to scare Americans about job losses and an ensuing nose-diving economy should the military spending cuts hold.

Except there’s one problem. Republicans aren’t supposed to believe that government spending creates jobs. But in this last act of desperation, however, it seems that Republicans pushing to preserve America’s bloated military budget have come to a pretty significant epiphany. Next week, three right-wing think tanks will co-host Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Reps. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and Randy Forbers (R-VA) to “discuss the dangers of deeper defense cuts.” All four lawmakers are warning about job loss because of sequestration, yet they’ve all previously argued that government spending doesn’t create jobs:

SEN. KELLY AYOTTE

Now: “So we’re not just talking about the jobs issue, which is, of course, of concern to anyone who serves in Congress. We’re talking about lost lives if we don’t give our men and women the equipment that they need.” [6/24/12]

Then: “It’s not the government that’s going to create jobs in this country, it’s our small businesses, it’s the private sector.” [9/22/10]

SEN. JON KYL

Now: “The whole point here [staving off the sequester] is to try to get some economic growth, job creation, to get out of this recession.” [5/24/12]

Then: “Faced with the reality of historic unemployment rates and record federal debt, I had hoped that President Obama, by now, would understand that even more government spending doesn’t create jobs.” [9/09/11]

REP. BUCK MCKEON

Now: “Sequestration’s impact on the economy would be sudden and severe, … result[ing] in the loss of about 1 million jobs in 2013 and 2014 and a half a percent cut to America’s already meager economic growth.” [6/24/12]

Then: “We don’t look to the government usually to create jobs. What we like to see them do is get out of our hair and let us create the jobs.” [5/21/12]

REP. RANDY FORBES

Now: “For reasons of both national security and local jobs, citizens of Hampton Roads ought to carefully consider the sober assessments of our military commanders and leaders regarding the impacts of adding another $600 billion in security cuts to the $489 billion Congress has already enacted.” [10/08/11]

Then: “Congressman Forbes believes there is a simple truth when it comes to job creation in America: real solutions create real growth that generates real jobs. In order to make this happen, government needs to get out of the way.” [Forbes' website]

And outside of the hypocrisy, the GOP’s jobs argument is spurious. Republicans are holding up a new industry-backed study claiming the military spending cuts will mean a loss of nearly one million jobs. But experts have pointed out the report’s many flaws, mainly that government spending in non-defense sectors of the economy creates more jobs.

The study is good for “political purposes, not very good analysis of the labor market,” said defense budget expert Gordon Adams. CATO expert Chris Preble said the report shows that the industry is just “trying to save their profits.”

There’s also no evidence that the military spending sequester will be “devastating” as some have argued and polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans favor cutting DOD’s budget. But Republicans will most likely ignore these facts and fight to preserve the Pentagon’s needlessly bloated budget, all while abandoning a central tenet of their party’s ideology.

House Republicans are making a full court press to pass a defense budget $8 billion larger than caps set by the Budget Control Act. The House Armed Services Committee’s proposed budget would include pet projects like a $5 billion initiative spread across three years, to build an East Coast missile defense system which the military doesn’t want. But it appears that House Republicans have no interest in the Navy’s efforts to consume more biofuels and fuel from green energy sources.

On Monday, the Navy will announce the ships for its demonstration “Great Green Fleet” — an aircraft carrier strike group powered by biolfuels and other green energy sources — but, as reported by Wired’s Danger Room, the House Armed Services Committee is banning the Pentagon from buying alternative fuel that costs more than a “traditional fossil fuel” in its report on next year’s budget. That’s a standard that the upstart biofuel industry will find hard to meet and could well spell the end of the Pentagon’s early efforts to end a dependence on fossil fuels.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and is one of the staunch defenders of the inflated defense budget, has been on a mission to kill the Navy’s use of biofuels since at least February. In a February hearing, the Viriginia Republican attacked Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus:

I understand that alternative fuels may help our guys in the field, but wouldn’t you agree that the thing they’d be more concerned about is having more ships, more planes, more prepositioned stocks. Shouldn’t we refocus our priorities and make those things our priorities instead of advancing a biofuels market?

Before letting Mabus answer, Forbes, whose homestate houses the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, shot back, “You’re not the secretary of the energy. You’re the secretary of the Navy.”

Indeed, the Republican opposition to biofuels, while encouraging various other types of military spending, may have a political dimension. In President Obama’s State of the Union speech in January, he put the Department of Defense at the forefront of an ambitious alternative energy plan. In February, Forbes quipped, “Now look, I love green energy. It’s a matter of priorities.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey made the case last October that military use of green energy technologies “saves lives” and an Army study in August found “A fighting force that isn’t restricted by the reach of a tanker truck or weighted down by heavy batteries is more nimble and, as a result, more lethal.”

House Republicans have passed their plan to avoid cuts to the defense budget. And the House Armed Services Committee, under Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon’s (R-CA) leadership, even boosted the budget by $8 billion. Neither Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey nor Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had requested the larger budget and new polling data shows that 65 percent of Americans think defense spending is already too high.

But while the military’s leadership and the American public are all opposed to the House Republicans’ ballooned defense budget — which includes a $5 billion missile defense project described by Dempsey as totally unnecessary — Armed Services Committee member Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) took to CNN this morning to pushback against the critics of the proposed budget. Forbes was asked about the polling data and responded:

Do [the American public] really want a reduction in capacity? I think when they hear the president and many people over in the Senate talking about the fact that they can have some of these cuts but still maintain the security of the United States I think any of us would want those reductions. But I think when you ask the American people ‘Do they really want to reduce the security of the United States of America?’ I think the answer comes back they don’t. They want to make sure that we’re maintaining and guaranteeing that security.

Watch him:

But Forbes’ questions were answered yesterday. Panetta warned that ignoring the spending blueprint submitted by himself and Dempsey, as the Congressional Republicans have done, could actually hurt national security. He told reporters:

If members try to restore their favorite programs without regard to an overall strategy, the cuts will have to come from areas that could impact overall readiness. There is no free lunch here. Every dollar that is added will have to be offset by cuts in national security.

And the polling data showed that Americans are surprised by the size of discretionary defense spending when viewed alongside discretionary spending for other budget items. “This suggests that Americans generally underestimate the size of the defense budget and that when they receive balanced information about its size they are more likely to cut it to reduce the deficit,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation.