THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

That if there is any real need to cut spending, the most logical, nay, necessary area deserving of cuts is Defense. Long the Holy Grail and Official Money Pit of Congress, the people who elect Congress are more and more realizing that there is no bang for the buck there.

As Washington debates how to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, Republicans prioritized Americans’ retirement and healthcare accounts as the only areas to cut spending, and it rivals tax cuts for the wealthy as their primary area of concern. However, there is one area of government spending that has not come under fire from the Republicans honed in on spending cuts, and it should be the highest priority in any fiscal cliff negotiations to find an equitable deficit reduction deal.

Republicans are having difficulty coming up with legitimate areas to cut spending, because Social Security and Medicare, their favorite programs to defund, do not add to the nation’s deficit. In fact, conservative pundit David Frum wrote that Republicans are struggling to find areas to cut spending because with spending at its lowest level in decades, there are few areas worthy of attention that have not already been cut to the bone. What Frum failed to address is defense spending, and for many Republicans, the automatic cuts in the sequestration bill are one reason there is a sense of urgency to avoid the fiscal cliff even if Washington is not talking about them.

No one would purport that defense is a not a top-tier priority in America, but the culture of war, or readiness for war, coupled with the war on terror takes up a major share of the nation’s spending. Many Republicans are wont to refer to the intent of the Founding Fathers for a variety of reasons, but the founders were opposed to maintaining an army without a threat to homeland security. James Madison warned, “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded. War is the parent of armies, and from these proceed debts and taxes that are known instruments for subduing the force of the people. The inequality of fortunes and opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war assure that no nation could reserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Thomas Jefferson concurred and said “There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation, that leaders should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot, but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.”

America is engaged in a war in Afghanistan, and no expense should be spared to protect and supply the brave soldiers fighting and dying to prosecute that unnecessary and unfunded conflict. However, it is an assault on the people’s intelligence for men like Speaker John Boehner to stand on the floor of the House and proclaim America is broke while hundreds-of-billions of dollars are squandered on over 1000 military bases around the globe. Boehner and his Republican cohort complain that Americans’ retirement and health savings accounts are an unsustainable expense bankrupting the nation, and yet sustaining the military industrial complex is an expense Republicans will not broach because corporations like Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, and KBR will hardly survive without taxpayer-funded entitlements.

Cutting defense spending will be a hard fight. Probably harder than winning in Afghanistan, but the fate of our nation depends on it.