. . .
The chart shows President Obama's disconcerting defense budget isn't going down after the wars; it shows the potential cuts that Congress put itself under with the sequestration rules if they don't agree on a budget deal (which has caused howls of pending disaster from Republicans and some Democrats); and it shows the post-cold-war-style drawdown, where, historically the defense budget should draw down after ending wars. Even though we have heard that Mitt Romney has taken up with the Bush-era neocons and planned to raise the defense budget $2 trillion above the Pentagon's requested budget over the next nine years, this graph gives a gut-punching visual of the almost straight-up trajectory of the defense budget under a Romney presidency. I lived through Reagan's huge defense budget buildup, but look at it, starting in 1980 on this chart of constant dollars, and you can see that Reagan's efforts were puny compared to what Romney wants to do.
Even though Romney claims that we need this massive increase - which will take us to Korean War levels with no planned war - he has not laid out in any detail what he plans to accomplish with this money. He talks about building more ships and three submarines a year and starting up the cancelled F-22 Raptor fighter line, but he fails to put it into a picture of how submarines and cancelled, failed planes are going to make us safer from the insurgency wars that we might face in the future. In the "Mad Men" view of the world, these cold-war-style weapons are suppose to make us safe, but the United States faces a different world and a different threat than it did in that era. And never mind that we already spend more money on our defense than the rest of the world combined.
I saw some of those cold war relics when I went to Fleet Week in San Francisco this weekend. It is ironic that, although Fleet Week is still held every year, San Francisco no longer has any military bases nearby, and the city is decidedly anti-war and anti-Pentagon. The sailors who were roaming the streets were warmly welcomed by the city and there were families, mainly sons and fathers, lined up at Coit Tower with me to get a good look at the loud and impressive flying of the Navy's Blue Angels in the F-18 aircraft.
. . .
