GOP needs a sweep in 2012 to save defense budget

Rowan Scarborough:

Defense analysts and Capitol Hill insiders are anticipating that automatic federal budget cuts will occur Jan. 1 and force the armed forces to scrap plans for new weapons systems.

Washington’s polarized political landscape shows no signs of a compromise on taxes and spending that would head off the 2011 Budget Control Act’s requirement for across-the-board cuts to begin in nine months.

For the Pentagon, this would mean another 10-year, $500 billion spending cut in addition to the already budgeted $487 billion reduction. In the first year of the automatic spending reductions, the military would need to slash an additional $50 billion from its budget, likely ending a new long-range bomber and a new Army tactical vehicle, and shrinking the Navy’s fleet of 11 aircraft carriers.

“I didn’t use to think this way,” said Daniel Goure, a longtime defense analyst at the pro-business Lexington Institute think tank. “But unless one side or the other sweeps the table in November, I think sequestration will happen.”

Sequestration is the formal name for the automatic spending cuts.

Mr. Goure has watched Republicans and Democrats dig in.

“There is intransigence of both parties to the elements of any deal,” he said. “It’s all budget reductions on one side and mostly tax increases on the other.

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Even if Democrats raise taxes they will not spend the money on defense.  They will use it to prop up unsustainable entitlement programs and other vote buying schemes.  And, they will keep spending on "alternative energy" energy boondoggles.  The only way to save defense spending and insure our national security is with a Republican sweep.