Should Defense Spending Be Cut to Balance the Federal Budget? Essay Example

Background

In the year 2011, the federal government spending was significantly more than the revenue collected. While the federal government collected only $ 2.2 trillion from the various taxes, fees and licenses, the spending of the government was $ 3.8 trillion (Niesen, 86). While there is a general agreement that the government spending is out of control and there is need of urgent reform, opinion is divided on the argument that specific cuts on defense will enable the government to balance its budget.   Some of the issues that will be considered in this paper are the argument around spending too much or little on the defense.

Policy Options

The first duty of the government is to protect the lives and property of the citizens. The public safety functions are usually the last to be affected by the tightened budgets. As a result, the cuts to the defense budget at the federal level are usually portrayed as assaults to the nation’s very existence.    There is the belief that the current and the future budget battlefield are products of the advanced and expensive technologies. It is therefore only proper only to equip the people that put their lives on the line with the best of protective gear and equipment but also to pay them reasonably.

It is possible to bring about a cut in the national budget without short changing the national security. This is because the defense department is part of the same American government that is characterized by inefficiency, fraud and waste. For instance it has been noted that that about 10 percent of the non war budget of the defense department goes healthcare.  This is $ 53 billion that can be reduced drastically and saved but any attempt has faced opposition from the retired military officers (Niesen, 56).

Another option for ensuring a cut on the military spending without hurting its capability is by focusing on the back office bureaucracy that oversees its operation.  Researchers have realized that the back office overhead accounts for 40 percent of the Department of Defense budget. This is big spending compared to an average of the 25 percent of the budget spend across different ministries.  The department of defense employs 800,000 civilians that if reduced to meet to the average would help the pentagon save $ 80 billion per year (Niesen,76).

In addition, there are about 560 active military officers under the pentagon payroll that will never be deployed. This coupled with another significant 700,000 ghost contractors civil servants bring it to 2 million people that will never face the enemy (Yarhi-Milo, 12).  This can be corrected by the federal government using cheaper civilian employees  in such process like supply chain, human resource, transportation and communication so that the government save $ 5 billion annually (Yarhi-Milo, 12).

Recommendations

There is room for saving money on the military hardware without reducing the quantity and the quality of the weapons that the defense department buys. This can be done by ensuring that the weapons bought actually do the work. Critics have noted that as high as $100 billion is wasted a year on military weapons that fail when they are deployed (Niesen, 106). Spending dollars more efficiently will also strengthen the national security.

The civilian workforce on the department of defense should be reduced by about 10 and 20 percent. This is projected to lead to defense budget cuts of a half a trillion dollars in a decade.

Works cited

Niesen, Molly. “The Little Old Lady Has Teeth: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Advertising Industry, 1970–1973”. Advertising & Society Review, Volume 12, Issue 4, 2012.

Yarhi-Milo, Keren, “In the Eye of the Beholder: How Leaders and Intelligence Communities Assess the Intentions of Adversaries”. International Security. Vol. 38 (No. 1): 35, 2013.