Deficits add pressure to cut defense spending FEDERAL SPENDING Swelling deficits could force cuts at Pentagon once considered 'sacrosanct'

U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D - 9th District, Oakland) speaks at a Martin Luther King Day celebration on Monday, Jan. 17, 2011, in Oakland, Calif. Ran on: 02-07-2011 Rep. Barbara Lee wants to see defense spending restrained and the military's global mission re-examined. Ran on: 02-07-2011 Rep. Barbara Lee wants to see defense spending restrained and the military's global mission re-examined. Ran on: 02-07-2011 Rep. Barbara Lee wants to see defense spending restrained and the military's global mission re-examined. Ran on: 02-22-2011 Barbara Lee Ran on: 02-22-2011 Barbara Lee Ran on: 07-25-2011 Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland. less U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D - 9th District, Oakland) speaks at a Martin Luther King Day celebration on Monday, Jan. 17, 2011, in Oakland, Calif. Ran on: 02-07-2011 Rep. Barbara Lee wants to see defense ... more Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Deficits add pressure to cut defense spending 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Astronomical federal deficits and Tea Party enthusiasm for deficit reduction are producing hairline cracks in the Republican Party over defense spending and an uneasy alliance between anti-war Bay Area liberals and small-government conservatives.

Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, and Kevin Brady, R-Texas, think defense spending needs to be restrained and the global mission of the U.S. military, including bases in Europe and Asia, re-examined.

"Until recently, defense was sacrosanct," including among Democrats, said Lee, who intends to recruit Tea Party-backed members to her cause. "You couldn't get anyone, except for a few of us, to talk about cutting defense. Now I think there's an opening."

Brady has included defense cuts in his bill to reduce spending $153 billion over five years.

"Is the Department of Defense a sacred cow?" Brady asked. "Every wasted dollar is a dollar either lost to a soldier's care or heaped upon a soldier's children as future debt. That's just not acceptable."

Two forces are driving the scrutiny: the size of the defense budget and fear, even in the Pentagon, that the debt itself has become a national security threat.

Record deficit looming

This year's deficit is expected to hit a record $1.5 trillion; the debt is on course to reach 90 percent of the U.S. economy within the decade. In nine years, interest costs will reach $1 trillion and exceed the $725 billion Pentagon budget, according to a deficit commission headed by former GOP Sen. Pete Domenici and former Clinton budget chief Alice Rivlin.

The Pentagon's budget, not including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has doubled since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, reaching a new post-World War II high. The United States spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defense.

The U.S. Navy is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to U.S. allies.

"Just the research and development budget is larger than any other defense budget in the world, including China's," said Gordon Adams, a professor of international relations at American University.

The Pentagon also spends more than all domestic programs combined: highways, airports, law enforcement, education, energy, agriculture, national parks, research and everything else Congress funds each year. Add homeland security and Veterans Affairs, and the share rises above 60 percent.

Defense consumes nearly as much as Social Security and almost as much as Medicare and Medicaid combined, the government's two big health care programs that are the main drivers of future debt.

Under President Obama, military spending has grown as a share of the economy since the George W. Bush presidency. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has offered a $78 billion, five-year "cut" that would only slow the growth of $6 trillion-plus in planned spending in the next decade.

Although it was a Republican president and former general, Dwight Eisenhower, who warned of a "military-industrial complex" and drew trade-offs between new schools and new weapons, his party has since made a "strong national defense" a core platform.

Two ongoing wars

With wars ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats are terrified to show anything less than enthusiastic support for the military. As a result, the defense budget has become what Lee called a "black hole, with no oversight, no accountability and, really, no consequences."

Leading conservative defense experts have begun to ask how much is enough. Kori Schake, a former Bush administration national security official, called the debt "the major threat to American security."

"While I don't think defense should be the only thing cut," Schake said, "defense should make a contribution to the broader national goal of solvency."

The new budget plan that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., issued Thursday slashes domestic spending but allows defense spending to rise $8 billion this year. Still, that is half the amount Obama requested.

Outside groups are calling for much bigger savings of $1 trillion over a decade. Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas, first proposed cuts that size last summer but had few takers. Since then, the president's bipartisan deficit commission and the Domenici-Rivlin study called for similar $1 trillion-range cuts.

Even cuts this size would preserve massive U.S. military superiority, Adams said.

Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy for the libertarian Cato Institute, argued for scaling back the global military mission, such as bases in Germany and Japan and nuclear arsenals that were aimed against the Soviets.

Frank said current budgets support "intervention in the affairs of other countries" and are "irrelevant to our own security."

Since the November election, GOP leaders have shifted course on defense cuts, saying they are on the table. But Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he would "oppose any plans that have the potential to damage or jeopardize our national security."

Conservative voices

A group of conservative leaders influential in the Tea Party movement, including former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Freedom Works and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, wrote to GOP leaders in December saying it was "outrageous" to say reducing military spending to Bush-era levels is insufficiently pro-military.

Texas Rep. Brady said he has a "100 percent pro-defense voting record," and his younger brother is in active Army duty at Fort Bliss, Texas.

"I won't support any cut that damages him or any other military family or their mission, but a leaner bureaucracy makes for a stronger military," Brady said. "As lawmakers start to dig deeper into the deficit and understand what we're facing, we don't have a choice."