How to Save $445 Billion Without a Supercommittee

Today or tomorrow the bipartisan “Supercommittee” will announce that it's failed to reach an agreement on deficit reduction. So the deficit will have to be reduced by cuts in defense and social spending that were written into the legislation that created the failed congressional committee.

Failure wasn’t an option, it was inevitable.

The six Republicans on the 12-member committee rejected any new tax revenue to help lower the deficit. Having killed the deal, congressional Republicans are now looking for a way to block $454 billion in automatic “triggered” defense cuts that will be made over the next 10 years. (They have demonstrated considerably less concern over $600 billion in automatic cuts to other programs.) Already Republicans are circulating Defense Secretary Leon Pannetta’s testimony, warning that the agreed-to cuts in defense spending will be “devastating” and leave a “hollow force.”

Failure wasn’t an option, it was inevitable.

Progressive policy groups were analyzing the defense budget long before the Senate confirmed Leon Panetta as secretary of defense. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), for example, has provided a menu of defense cuts that would make the military leaner, rather than hollow.

Remember, the Pentagon hasn’t been on an austerity budget. Defense spending has increased 60 percent since 2001, an increase that doesn’t include spending on two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Where to cut?

Consider POGO’s carefully calculated reductions in Pentagon spending:

• Private Contractors — Since 2000, the Defense Department has spent more than $1.5 trillion on service contractors, with the contractors' cost to taxpayers almost tripling each year. (Do names like Halliburton and Blackwater ring a bell?) POGO reports that the $200 billion the DOD spends on contractors each year is $50 billion more than what is spent on all uniformed personnel in the service branches. That is $50 billion more than was spent on all active duty, reserve, and national guard employed by the DOD. A modest 15 percent reduction in what the government spends on contractors each year would net a minimum of $30 billion per year.

Total savings over 10 years: $300 billion

• Belated Cold-War Peace Dividend — With the threat of Soviet tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap to attack West Germany unlikely, a reduction in U.S. troops in Western Europe is long overdue. Pulling 20,000 U.S. troops out of Europe, and capping our military presence there at 35,000, will save money spent on personnel, housing, transportation, operation and maintenance. U.S. rapid-deployment capability has been proven in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, it was established in the first Gulf War. American taxpayers’ enthusiasm for the defense of Europe was always questionable and is now more eroded by an economic crisis at home. The continued U. S. military occupation of Western Europe is becoming a hard sell, even for big defense spenders like Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

• Total savings over 10 years: $30 billion

Just Say "No" to the Osprey — When “SecDef” Leon Panetta landed in a heliport in Lower Manhattan last week, the ride cost taxpayers at least $11,000. That’s what it costs to keep the Marine Corps V-22 Osprey in the air for one hour. POGO makes a compelling case for letting the Osprey procurement contract die when it ends in 2012. In a rational world, this is an easy call. The vertical-takeoff, fixed-wing Marine aircraft costs $122 million per copy. If the procurement system worked, the Osprey never would have moved past its test phase. Thirty people were killed in Osprey crashes while it was being developed, and it was plagued by cost overruns. Dick Cheney tried and failed to kill the Osprey when he was defense secretary during the presidency of the elder George Bush. Don't look for Panetta to dry. Yet by stopping production of the 170 additional Ospreys on the Marine Corps wish list, and replacing them with MH-60 or CH-53 helicopters, Pentagon procurement officers realize big savings while creating a safer and more efficient combat force. Even if the Marines lose an aircraft to which they are irrationally attached.

Total savings over 10 years: $12 billion

Buy a Better Fighter — POGO also argues that the B and C models of the F-35 Joint Strike fighter should be replaced by the F/A-18 Hornet, which is already in use and far cheaper than the two F-35s still in the pipeline. The new F-35s are the most expensive variants of the most expensive DOD procurement ever. Technical problems have grounded the B model. Its cost, if it ever gets off the ground, is $132.8 million per plane. The alternative, the F-18, costs $42.2 million per copy — and 40 percent less to operate than the F-35s.

Total savings: $43.64 billion

Add $60 billion in savings from a modest increase in the TRICARE premiums that retired military personnel pay for healthcare, along other military healthcare reforms suggested by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and you quickly get to $445 billion. And here’s much more in POGO’s Spending Less, Spending Smarter report.

The Defense Department — aware that Congressional Republicans have its back – is most defensive when defending its own budget. If progressives don't begin a discussion about defense spending, big cuts for social service programs will begin to seem inevitable.