WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- A task force is advocating major cuts in traditional military defense spending and a wholesale restructuring of the national security budget into a single, unified document that would give Congress a bird's eye-view of all security spending, and make tradeoffs between military and domestic security accounts.
The fractured nature of agency budgets, bureaucratic infighting and the competing committees on Capitol Hill conspire to prevent a single, unified security budget, and therefore allows dangerous gaps in American defenses.
According to a new report from the Task Force on a United Security Budget, the Bush administration is seeking $462 billion in "military security" spending in 2007 and just $72 billion for key vulnerabilities like port security, nonproliferation programs and diplomacy. Characterizing it as a tradeoff between "offensive" and "defensive" spending, it suggests cutting $60 billion from military accounts and putting $50 billion into "defensive" security accounts, leaving $10 billion for other domestic priorities, or paying down the deficit.
The total cited for military spending does not include the $70 billion supplemental appropriation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now under consideration on Capitol Hill. The task force notes that the United States spends more than the next 15 biggest defense spenders -- including China, Japan and the United Kingdom -- combined, so believes there is plenty of room to make cuts.
The report calls for a "better prioritization" of spending to reflect the threats facing the United States -- terrorism and asymmetric attacks, rather than head-on military conflict.
It would cut $8 billion from the $10 billion National Missile Defense program, citing CIA estimates that the United States is more likely to be targeted by terrorists secreting a nuclear weapon on a ship entering an American port than it is a intercontinental ballistic missile. It would suspend acquisition of the Air Force F-22, plowing $800 million into other aircraft programs and $2 billion into savings. It would cancel the SSN-74 Virginia Class submarine, saving $2.2 billion. It would also cancel the Navy's DD(X) destroyer program, saving $3.4 billion. It would cancel the procurement of the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey, saving $2.1 billion in 2007, and the C-130J cargo aircraft, saving $1.6 billion.
The task force also recommends deactivating two Air Force wings and one Navy aircraft carrier for savings of $7 billion; terminate research into offensive, space-based weapons for savings of $5 billion; and cut $5 billion overall from the Pentagon's $73 billion research and development account for 2007. Finally, it would reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal to 600 operational warheads and 400 reserve warheads, and eliminate the Trident II nuclear missile. Together, those moves would save $14 billion, because fewer bombers and submarines would be necessary to carry the reduced number of warheads into battle.
That money would then be pumped into areas the task force considers woefully underfunded -- defensive tools and preparation in the event of an attack.
Chief among them is funding development of alternative energy sources -- in part because oil proceeds fund some terrorist groups, and also because dependence on Middle Eastern oil causes the United States "to prop up and defend unpopular and undemocratic regimes, and deploy troops to protect the flow of oil from unstable regions," according to the report. The task force would add $8.8 billion to the current Bush administration request of $1.2 billion.
The report would also dramatically increase funding for nuclear nonproliferation activities, from $1.3 billion to $5.9 billion, to keep radioactive materials out of the hands of terrorists.
It would add $10 billion to overseas economic development and foreign aid, addressing poverty and hopelessness, considered by some a root cause of terrorism. It notes that more than half the foreign aid now provided by the United States funds military and economic assistance to strategic allies, and less than 30 percent is directed at combating poverty in poor countries.
Money pulled from military spending would also be put toward securing key American facilities against attacks, like nuclear plants, chemical plans and ports. It would add $6 billion to public transit security -- which is not slated for any funding -- and an additional $10 billion into the public health sector to prepare for a biological attack or a pandemic. First responders around the country like fire and police would get an additional $4 billion, and container security -- separate from ports -- would get an additional $2.5 billion, over the $380 million requested in the budget.
The task force is comprised of experts from the left-leaning Center for American Progress, Foreign Policy in Focus, and Security Policy Working Group, and the Center for Defense Information, among others. It is the second annual report advocating a unified security budget and tradeoff between military spending and domestic security.
