How To Save $198 Billion Per Year

 

Our friends at New Priorities Network suggest these quick and easy cuts to military spending.

Pentagon items we can cut

“We’re Not Broke: A commonsense guide to avoiding the fiscal swindle while making the United States more equitable, green, and secure” (Institute for Policy Studies, December 12, 2012) recommends these military spending cuts as part of an $881-billion-a-year budget balancing plan. IPS says we should “Right-size the Pentagon to make the United States and the world more secure…. without hurting our national security largely by ending the war in Afghanistan, scaling back the sprawling network of over­seas U.S. military bases, and scrapping ob­solete and wasteful military programs” (p. 1).

Proposed reforms	Potential annual savings ($billions)
End the U.S. war in Afghanistan	86
Eliminate one-third of the U.S. military bases in Europe and Asia	10
Eliminate military waste and unnecessary weapon systems:
Drastically reduce the nuclear warhead arsenal as a major step on the path to nuclear abolition	20
Stop R&D and procurement of unnecessary weapons	9
Eliminate two active Air Force wings and two carrier groups that are not needed to address current and probable future threats	8
Achieve savings from eliminating inefficiencies to reduce overall mili­tary spending, rather than increasing other Pentagon expenditures	28
Scale back outsourcing to military contractors by 15 percent	40
End Foreign Military Financing	5
Total	$198 billion a year

Recent studies from the right, left, and center propose similar savings.

• “Reasonable Defense,” from the Project on Defense Alternatives, would reduce U.S. presence in the world by 40 percent and save more than $550 billion over 10 years.
• The Stimson Center’s “New U.S. Defense Strategy for a New Era” identifies cuts close to $1 trillion over 10 years, which is almost 20 percent of the 10-year defense budget plan.
• The CATO Institute, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Center for American Progress, and Bowles-Simpson Commission have all called for deep cuts in defense spending ranging from $350 to $590 billion beyond the cuts already in place.

The consensus is: Pentagon spending can be substantially cut without making us unsafe – and it should be.