As the leadership of both major parties works together to avoid any serious cut in defense spending, and while Leon Panetta is going around lying about how even the modest cuts being proposed will “devastate” our national security, an interesting new survey shows strong support in the citizenry for much deeper cuts.
While politicians, insiders, and experts may be divided over how much the government should spend on the nation’s defense, there’s a surprising consensus among the public about what should be done: They want to cut spending far more deeply than either the Obama Administration or the Republicans.
That’s according to the results of an innovative, new, nationwide survey by the Center for Public integrity, the Program for Public Consultation, and the Stimson Center. Not only does the public want deep cuts, it wants those cuts to encompass spending in virtually every military domain — air power, sea power, ground forces, nuclear weapons, and missile defenses.
According to the survey, in which respondents were told about the size of the budget as well as shown expert arguments for and against spending cuts, two-thirds of Republicans and nine in 10 Democrats supported making immediate cuts — a position at odds with the leaderships of both political parties.
The average total cut was around $103 billion, a substantial portion of the current $562 billion base defense budget, while the majority supported cutting it at least $83 billion. These amounts both exceed a threatened cut of $55 billion at the end of this year under so-called “sequestration” legislation passed in 2011, which Pentagon officials and lawmakers alike have claimed would be devastating.
“When Americans look at the amount of defense spending compared to spending on other programs, they see defense as the one that should take a substantial hit to reduce the deficit,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation and the lead developer of the survey. “Clearly the polarization that you are seeing on the floor of the Congress is not reflective of the American people.”
A broad disagreement with the Obama Administration’s current spending approach — keeping the defense budget mostly level — was shared by 75 percent of men and 78 percent of women, all of whom instead backed immediate cuts. That view was also shared by at least 69 percent of every one of four age groups from 18 to 60 and older, although those aged 29 and below expressed much higher support, at 92 percent.
Disagreement with the Obama administration’s continued spending on the war in Afghanistan was particularly intense, with 85 percent of respondents expressing support for a statement that said in part, “it is time for the Afghan people to manage their own country and for us to bring our troops home.” A majority of respondents backed an immediate cut, on average, of $38 billion in the war’s existing $88 billion budget, or around 43 percent.
Despite the public’s distance from Obama’s defense budget, the survey disclosed an even larger gap between majority views and proposals by House Republicans this week to add $3 billion for an extra naval destroyer, a new submarine, more missile defenses, and some weapons systems the Pentagon has proposed to cancel. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has similarly endorsed a significant rise in defense spending.
I like this approach to a survey. Too often you can easily skew the results with the way a question is phrased. When dealing with a question like this, you would likely get a significantly different result if you asked “Do you support deep cuts to America’s national defenses?” rather than “Do you support reducing the $562 billion we currently spend on the military?” And most people responding would likely have no idea how much we actually do spend, what percentage that is of the total budget, what it’s actually spent on, or what the arguments are on either side. They would filter their answer through a prism of being either “strong” or “weak” on defense.
But if you give them the basic facts and then give them the strongest arguments on both sides to consider before answering, you’re more likely to get a considered response instead of an ignorant one. Either way, the result is clearly out of step with the two major parties, both of which sell ignorance-based fear on behalf of the military-industrial complex.
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Modusoperandi
May 14, 2012 at 2:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But we need that new destroyer, that sub and that missile defense! Will you leave us undefended against the nefarious schemes of Cobra?
Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
May 14, 2012 at 2:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Modusoperandi:
COOOOOOOBRAAAA!
theschwa
May 14, 2012 at 2:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Subs and destroyers cannot stand up to the Weather Dominator, so we do not need them. Missile defenses will fail under the Pyramid of Darkness, so they must go.
Kaintukee Bob
May 14, 2012 at 2:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Modusoperandi:
But G.I. Joe has taught me that all we need to be the evil terrorists (I mean, Cobra) is a dozen people with codenames and commando training.
Ergo, we can cut the budget significantly and use the savings to train a dozen MORE Joes, DOUBLING our defensive power.
Doug Little
May 14, 2012 at 2:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And Will Smith doesn’t come cheap when you need to defend yourself against an alien invasion.
zippythepinhead
May 14, 2012 at 2:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
With 60% or more of the discretionary budget, defense spending is de facto the #1 jobs program of the US. Defense programs are dispersed to practically every congressional district in the union, so voting against defense will almost certainly have a negative impact on a MOC’s constituency. I’m all for cutting military spending to Clinton era levels or less, but you’d have to replace the jobs lost with equivalent ones. The Obama infrastructure and green jobs initiatives were one hope, but they haven’t materialized and the congress refuses any meaningful jobs program. It’s obscene that the US spends more on military spending than all our allies and enemies combined. God, I’m drunk.
laurentweppe
May 14, 2012 at 3:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Apparently, according to the Canard (aka What Wikileaks would have looked like if it had been founded by french people during WWI), the pentagon is trying to “convince” the EU to spend a lot more money on their millitary in order to lower the US spendings in Europe’s sphere of influence, including paying for the notoriously useless “anti-ballistic system” which so far has done nothing except making diplomatic relations Between the EU and Russia more difficult that Washington still wants to install on eastern european ground.
So that would mean the Obama administration is actually trying to cut the US millitary budget… by making France and Germany and England and Poland and Greece pay the bills.
Bronze Dog
May 14, 2012 at 3:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Would like it if I got into a survey like this. Should probably try a bit of web searching, though I imagine I’d get a lot of biased ones from partisan nutbars.
Chiroptera
May 14, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A majority of both Republicans and Democrats support cuts in defense spending?
Wow! If the US were a functioning democracy where the elected leaders act according to the will of the electorate, this would really be a significant factor in the campaigns!
KG
May 14, 2012 at 3:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
laurentweppe@7,
Greece, bizarrely, continues to spend a larger proportion of its GDP on the military than any other EU state. Incidentally, Ed, labelling spending on the military as “defence spending” is to implicitly accept the big lie of the military-industrial complex. “Military spending” is the non-question-begging alternative.
jjgdenisrobert
May 14, 2012 at 3:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The problem, as zippy as indicated, is that the only true industrial base left in the US is military equipment manufacturing. If military spending were cut significantly, it’s likely that this manufacturing base would be hard hit, and the jobs that depend on it likewise. I also agree with zippy that this need not be the case: you can cut defense spending and maintain job levels, by either replacing the jobs lost by other jobs (infrastructure is always good), or by simply replacing inefficient, costly contractors with actual military personnel.
The cancellation of a few choice contracts to companies that hire most of their personnel from overseas would make a real dent in the military budget without affecting US jobs at all. But those contractors have deep ties to the top brass, especially to the military-evangelical complex that pretty much runs the Pentagon. So they will never be touched.
laurentweppe
May 14, 2012 at 4:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, in order to defends its border against fellow Nato member Turkey. Which is so stupid that it convinced many people to defend to this day Europe’s right-wing original project to kick Greece out of the Union and force its people starve to death as a punishment for the crime of moronically misusing their budget.
raym
May 14, 2012 at 4:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But if you give them the basic facts and then give them the strongest arguments on both sides to consider before answering, you’re more likely to get a considered response instead of an ignorant one
You mean there would be an informed, rather than ignorant citizenry? What a novel idea – someone should try it one day.
D. C. Sessions
May 14, 2012 at 4:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Especially if you go back to an honest definition that includes the VA and military projects in the DoE.
Crudely Wrott
May 14, 2012 at 5:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The last time I felt that the Department of Defense was actually defending me and the country as a whole was during the Cuban missile crisis.
Since then it’s chief function seems to be defending it’s spiraling growth. Adding to it’s duty by tasking it with “nation building” is simply adding the warm-amd-fuzzy to it’s mission statement.
We may have a “mean” fighting force but it has long ago ceased to be “lean” in any sense.
Just imagine what a few tens of billion dollars could mean to the infrastructure that is falling down around us. Bad roads, blighted and abandoned manufacturing sites, unsafe dams and bridges. Just imagine the jobs such maintainence would provide.
Evolouie
May 14, 2012 at 7:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For anyone who wants to know about military spending, here is a video from 2007 that is a must see.
lancifer
May 14, 2012 at 10:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Zippy,
I’m not sure what you mean by “…you’d have to replace the jobs lost with equivalent ones.” The post WWII expansion was perhaps the largest and longest lasting in US history.
While government programs like the GI bill and VA mortgages certainly helped, there was a huge market driven expansion once the industrial capacity that had been used to generate arms and munitions was allowed to produce products and services.
No centrally directed “jobs program” was responsible nor should one be constituted to redirect the huge amount of money currently collected from US tax payers and poured into the military industrial complex.
Matrim
May 14, 2012 at 10:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You can also cut spending without cutting jobs. If they could just change how the DoD budget works they could save a TON of money. They way it works right now, when funds are allocated they are done so in the basis of the previous fiscal year. If you have a budget of $100,000 dollars and you only spend $50,000, next year you will only be allocated $50,000. So, consequently, everyone makes sure to spend the entirety of their budget even if it requires buying stuff they don’t need or replacing stuff that doesn’t need replacing. Because some years you actually DO need that full amount and you want to make sure you have it. If we could change the system in a way that doesn’t take away your budget if you don’t spend it (maybe keep the budget the same, roll the surplus into a discretionary fund, and evaluate every few years) we could save a huge amount. I know our little EOD shop had about $220K to spend each year, and we’re just one of hundreds of EOD shops among thousands of military units.
sundoga
May 15, 2012 at 1:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I support the anti-Ballistic missile system.
I support the various “Future Trooper” initiatives.
I support the F-22 and F-35 programmes.
I support further development of Stealth technology.
I realise that puts me offside with a lot of you. But what I want to point out is that I can still support all of that AND see an easy, quick way to reduce massively the military budget: Cut the surface navy by two thirds.
After all, then we’ll only have about as much naval firepower as the rest of the world combined. I think we can live with that.
twincats
May 15, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What Matrim described, I experienced first hand. It was a yearly ritual in late Summer to start the annual appropriation paperwork by the end of July so that the last year’s budget could be spent by the end of the FY in August. I dreaded it every year because it took up so much time and effort in addition to my regular duties and the pressure to spend, spend, SPEND was incredible.
This was the early ’80s and I worked in the base Education Services office, so we’re talking about stuff like new typewriters, carpeting, paint, A/V equipment, and podiums for the classrooms (plus the costs for the contractors to install the stuff) along with new toys for the office. Ya know, just your vital, basic defense needs…
It was all very disillusioning and now that I look back on it, this probably started me on the road to being a commie\pinko\tree-hugging\hippie-loving\liberal.
Crudely Wrott
May 15, 2012 at 8:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
. . . and red faced admission of first degree apostrophe abuse in my #15.
I know better but I was hurried along by vivid memory . . .
Matrim and Twincats echo my sentiment that them what gets, get used to getting and come to expect more and more. That does not make me feel any more secure from threats foreign or domestic. The sense of entitlement and privilege displayed by the military, and even more by the acolytes that fund them (and pocket handsome profits of dollars and votes), have exactly the opposite result.
derwood
May 17, 2012 at 9:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There is a trend in this country to combat the education problems in the public schools by cutting their budgets. The logic goes something like this – we pay and pay for schools, and more and more kids are falling through the cracks and our schools are failing. Clearly, throwing money at them is not helping. What we need to do is CUT their budgets, then they will be forced to become more efficient, get rid of bad teachers, etc.
We have been in Afghanistan/Iraq for close to 10 years. Our people still get killed and maimed by IEDs, there are still plenty of insurgents in the hills – the country with the greatest military technology and largest – by far – defense budget cannot seem to beat a few malcontents hiding in caves in some miserable middle east crap hole.
Why not cut their budget> Then they would be forced to become more efficient…
For some reason, when I suggest this and make this comparison, I am called ‘naive’. I guess so…