Hey, sorry I’ve been AWOL last few days. Slammed at work… and then my cat died. She was 17. No one was really surprised, but still sad. Anyway, not looking for sympathy, but I just didn’t want you to think I was shirking so soon after coming on-board.
So, Zandar had a post on the 24th, a picture of Rand Paul on the cover of Reason with some snark about Paul’s predilection for cutting even programs that help his constituents. But I was intrigued by the quote… and by the lack of follow-up in the comments section. The quote that got me interested was Paul saying:
“They seem to say, ‘Well, we are for certain revisions to make the military more efficient,’ ” said Paul. “I’m of the belief that nothing around you will ever be efficient unless the top line number is lower. So, they don’t like what they call sequester. To me, that means that the top line number is lower, and if you really believe in savings in the military budget or else you’d have to find the savings, you’d be forced to find the savings.”
What do you all think of that? I mean, I think most of us here would agree defense spending can be cut. Paul seems open to it, under the notion that cutting defense will lead to greater efficiencies. Am I misreading Paul, do you think? And if not, why not embrace that part of his agenda? Why not make common cause with him on this issue if not others?
I had a similar debate with Josh Mull and others about Grover Norquist and Afghanistan. Josh’s view was, essentially (and I am paraphrasing here): We need to get out of Afghanistan, and if Norquist can help with that goal, we should work with him. My view was, “The man is not just amoral, but actively immoral. I’d call him a traitor, except he has not meant to give aid and comfort to our enemies, but solely to his own greed. In some ways, that is actually worse. Traitors sometimes believe in ideals greater than themselves.”
So, my view is, we shouldn’t embrace guys like Norquist or Paul tactically. They are just too destructive to ever legitimize. But I’d be curious about what the BJ community thinks about that.
I will say, though, that while I support defense cuts, I think Paul’s argument is idiotic. Sequester will not improve efficiency. Indeed, the costs of implementing sequester could be greater than the savings because of the costs associated with terminating contracts early and closing facilities and so on. We can cut defense, I would argue, because there are sound strategic reasons to do so. But changes in strategy, such as rethinking the security commitment to Taiwan, for instance, need to come first if you really want to make sound decisions. Paul’s efficiency fairy argument is, I think, laughable. But that is a separate issue.
Baud
Paul’s a senator with a vote, so there may be times our side needs to work with him. No reason ever to work with Norquist, who can’t be trusted. At best, if there are issues we agree on, we can take separate, but parallel actions.
muddy
You may not be seeking sympathy, but you have it. On the one hand, your cat lived a long life which is good. On the other, it is all the longer you have known him, and that’s really hard. My experience is that you will catch him/her out of the corner of your eye for a while. Personally I like those last “glimpses”.
Just Some Fuckhead
Rand Paul is prolly only a few nasty Redstate comments from becoming a Democrat.
Snowwy
Like any Republican with real power, the best Senator Paul (eugh, makes me sick just to say it) can do with me is “trust, but verify”. Never never NEVER give that slimy bleep the chance to bury a knife in your back.
Yutsano
Rand Paul has zero interest in shrinking the size of the military. Not if he can fuck the poor and vulnerable harder.
robertdsc-PowerBook
I would rather set Norquist on fire than work with him.
Steve
Paul’s idea is that if you cut the bottom-line number, the bureaucrats who actually control the spending will be forced to cut the “waste,” as opposed to useful stuff. But there’s a reason the waste is in there in the first place, and it’s usually because someone with political power demanded it. If you think there’s waste, you actually have to get in there and cut it, not just cut the bottom-line number and wish upon a star for the waste to go away.
Pillsy
Paul’s got a vote in the Senate, which is nothing to sneeze at no matter what a complete wangrod he is.
On the other hand, fuck Grover Norquist.
Cassidy
@robertdsc-PowerBook: I am intrigued by your ideas and….fuck it, I’ll bring the gasoline.
Yutsano
@Pillsy: If the military sequester reversal comes up for a vote, watch Rand vote for it faster than your head can spin. He’s nothing more than a Republican tool who talks pretty to the Reasonoids.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Yutsano: QFT.
Redshift
Paul’s quote is just a repackaged version of the standard conservative “most of your tax money is wasted, so we can cut taxes without cutting anything important.” Yes, he’s actually willing to apply that to defense spending, which is a plus. But he’s still in favor of “someone else” doing the cutting, because he’s either politically cowardly or lazy or both. If he’s willing to vote for a defense appropriation that actually cuts defense spending, I wouldn’t turn it down. But I doubt he’d vote for actual cuts that he could be held responsible for, as opposed to “someone should cut out the waste” policies.
Mark S.
I’m too tired to parse what the hell that even means.
If you agree with something Rand Paul says, I don’t see any problem with saying that or working with him on that particular issue. Rand Paul is also probably the least influential Senator in that body. Norquist, on the other hand, has 3/4 of the Republican party hanging on his ball sack. He’s actually a lot more dangerous.
Roger Moore
@Steve:
This. Also, too, this is a cheap way of avoiding taking responsibility for cutting popular parts of a program. You can claim that it’s not your fault the people in charge of cutting stuff cut the part that people actually like; you just gave them a budget and demanded they come up with a way of meeting it. IOW, it’s abrogating the responsibility to make real decisions.
sdhays
Exactly what part of the security commitment to Taiwan would you “rethink”?
Soonergrunt
Ron Paul is a corrupt moron. That’s really all that need be said about him. And I don’t give a fuck that he’s a doctor. The number of truly stupid people I’ve met in this world who have MD after their names convinces me that not only are the lot of them overcompensated, but that medical school can’t possibly be that hard.
As for Grover Fucking Norquist (the proper way to write about him here) you are right, he shouldn’t be elevated because he’s a greedy little nihilist. But since you’ve said that, I’m sure the firebaggers will come for you because Grover Fucking Norquist is the business partner of Jane Fucking Hamsher.
Bernard Finel
@sdhays: The whole thing. I’ll post on this later, but basically, the Taiwan contingency drives defense spending much more than people realize. If you parse requirements carefully, it seems likely to me that we spend more annually on capabilities for the Taiwan contingency than we do for Afghanistan. Real money.
Ash Can
First, condolences on the loss of your cat. Very sorry to hear that.
Second, I agree with Baud right out of the gate. If a bill reining in defense spending needs to get through the Senate, yes, it can be both worthwhile and necessary to work with Paul. Grover Norquist, however, is nothing but a hanger-on. What good can he do? He doesn’t have a vote in the legislature. Fuck him.
zifnab25
A vote is a vote. I just don’t see Paul breaking rank with his party. He’ll come up with a reason that cuts are really spending and spending is really a cut. Rand is pledged to Demint. Demint is a SC defense hawk. Rand talks petty, but he takes his orders from his wing of the GOP and no one else.
Steeplejack
@Bernard Finel:
This, or something close to it, except that rather than “destructive” I would say “erratic” or “unreliable”–maybe even “nutty.” Even when they say something surprisingly reasonable, you have no idea how they got there, and the odds are that when it comes out it will make whatever perceived gain you got not worth it. And then you’ll be stuck “on the same side” with them.
“You worked with Senator Paul to cut defense spending, so is it fair to say that you support the rest of his plan to balance the budget by having Aqua Buddha toll booths every 10 miles on the interstate highways?”
In lending legitimacy to the kooks, you don’t really have the ability to pick and choose just which parts of their agenda you are legitimizing and which parts not.
Note: This is a different situation from working on a single issue with “partners across the aisle” in a “bipartisan” fashion, i.e., with people you might disagree with on most policy issues, perhaps even vehemently, but who aren’t crazy loons. Norquist and Paul are demonstrably loony.
Mark S.
@Bernard Finel:
I can believe it. It’s some expensive ass shit that’s defending Taiwan.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
If Congress were truly serious about defense efficiencies, they would change it so that the only way military bases and defense contracts are setup would be entirely based on need, not local economic support. That won’t happen unless we are getting our butts kicked.
pragmatism
You work with the guy once and you end up in a creek praying to aqua Buddha and doing gravity bong hits. Total Trojan horse.
Bernard Finel
@pragmatism: Wait, no one said anything about gravity bong hits… b/c that’s an agenda I can support. Or I could if I didn’t have to periodically pee in a cup.
Stillwater
So, my view is, we shouldn’t embrace guys like Norquist or Paul tactically. They are just too destructive to ever legitimize. But I’d be curious about what the BJ community thinks about that.
I think that’s a huge mistake. I reduces policy issues to ideological issues. If anyone thinks that GN can help them achieve a policy goal, then they should side with GN on that policy.
A large reason why our politics is intractable is the demand for ideological purity.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
After reading further down the thread: I don’t have a problem with, say, soliciting Rand Paul’s vote for a piece of legislation that you’re supporting, or voting for a (no doubt rare) reasonable piece of legislation he is pushing. But I took Bernard’s original post to be referring to a more substantial “working with” Paul (or Norquist). In that situation there’s much more potential to get enmeshed in the crazier parts of the crazy person’s agenda. Think about whether you would want to co-sponsor any piece of legislation with Michele Bachmann more complicated than “National Corgi Week.”
Heliopause
By the way, Weltsfuhrer Adolph Hitler III called to remind us to commemorate Lindbergh Day tomorrow with proper obeisance to Prefect Bush.
sdhays
@Bernard Finel: I’ll be interested in reading your post. I’ve lived in Taiwan (and loved it!) and have friends there, so I realize I’m biased, but I think that a free Taiwan is something worth protecting. The transformation of Taiwan is a clear bright spot in American foreign policy over the last half century (not that it wasn’t at least partially an accident and also not claiming the transformation is even primarily the result of American foreign policy; basically, we just happened to not royally screw it up – yay us). I think it’s unlikely that actual action will ever be required to defend it (and perhaps this is where you’re coming from); on the other hand, the political situation in China has the potential change very quickly, and if that happens, who knows what that might mean for Taiwan?
Being prepared to defend a free people who can provide a real peaceful, stable democratic example in the region is something I’m more prepared to support than more freedom bombs. But I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
pragmatism
@Bernard Finel: weed: the other glibertarian Trojan horse.
Keep up the good work Bernard.
mainmati
As everyone on this blog already knows, the DOD budget has been inefficiently spread around as many Cong. districts. So, Sen. Paul’s meander goes nowhere. He’s an ideological moron and, my guess, probably also a painful dentist.
Weaselone
@Bernard Finel:
You mean like the spending on 11 massive, active duty Super-carriers that will likely end up littering the bottom of the Taiwan strait in the event of an actual conflict?
I agree that we could achieve a significant reduction in military budget while maintaining the safety of the US and protecting key interests, but that is not going to happen while our main military objective seems to be to compensate for the microscopic penises of most of our elected officials and their keyboard commando supporters.
Citizen Alan
@Stillwater:
There is absolutely no policy goal that any decent American should support that would put him or her on the same side as Grover Fucking Norquist.
Citizen Alan
BTW, this —
— is an exquisite turn of phrase which I plan to quote as often as possible.
Joey Maloney
@Stillwater: I think that’s a huge mistake. I reduces policy issues to ideological issues. If anyone thinks that GN can help them achieve a policy goal, then they should side with GN on that policy.
Almost right. If you think that GFN can help you achieve a policy goal, you can gratefully allow him to side with you.
Frankensteinbeck
Soliciting Rand Paul’s vote on a bill that reduces military spending, even letting him have public credit, would be an acceptable compromise.
EXCEPT…
Rand Paul doesn’t give two toots of a rat’s ass about reducing the military. He is my senator, and I am thoroughly familiar with the sonofabitch. You will not get Rand Paul’s vote to cut military spending without gutting something we desperately need in the process. Or at least publicly voting to block the Amero. He is a slightly less insane and more hypocritical version of his father, and you cannot peel one single item like ‘reduce defense spending’ out of the knot of crazy. He won’t play without a big ladle-full of The Ryan Plan.
To sum up, ‘Can we work with him on this issue?’ is an illusionary choice. He will not work with YOU, he only sounds like he might if you take him out of context.
Mnemosyne
@mainmati:
Since he’s an ophthalmologist (eye doctor with an MD), I’m guessing you’re right. ;-)
burnspbesq
@Citizen Alan:
Pretty much. I normally don’t hold grudges, but Grover Norquist could turn into a cross between Marty Lederman and Dan Shaviro yesterday and I still wouldn’t have any use for him. He’s done way too much harm, and some of it may be irreversible.
RSR
Top line cuts at military spending might be the only way to start the process…bottom line has never really been incentive.
Roger Moore
@Joey Maloney:
This. If you’re helping him with his goals, there’s going to be a hook. If he’s helping you with your goals, you get to set the hook for him.
Allen
First, so sorry about your cat. Friends cat just died at age 20. They almost immediately went out and got 2 rescue cats.
Second, I provided engineering services to the Navy and I thought it would be easy to spot where money could be saved. About the only thing I could find find was the way they contracted. The whole MILCON procedure is complex beyond belief.
gwangung
I’ll wager a good sum that this procedure had its genesis in someone trying to “insure” goo American taxpayer dollars wasn’t being wasted…
danielx
Ehhhh….defense spending is inherently redundant and wasteful, and that’s not even getting into Pentagon spending habits too much.
;Start rant:
Item: Stuff becomes obsolete even if you’re not using it. For military hardware, newer is better, generally speaking. If your army has to fight, make sure it has the best equipment and doctrine. If you think “the best” is overrated and too expensive, see the 1939 Germany vs. Poland match.
Item: If you’re actually using it, of course it seems (and is) wasteful. Stuff get blown up, wears out, flat out disappears, etc etc…bearing in mind that we’re speaking only of hardware, not even talking about the human cost – which in warfare has always been the cheapest ingredient*. You always want more than you think you will need, because you will lose some of it due to accidents, enemy action, whatever, so you always want more.
Item: Warfare is inherently wasteful. Ammunition, to name one example, costs a lot of money, uses a lot of resources…and gets used up in a hurry for no constructive purpose. Constructive in the literal sense, that is. On the other hand, if you’re the guy using it up, it’s getting used for the most constructive purpose of all, which is keeping your own ass alive and making the other guy dead. You can’t have too much ammunition.
Item: Much as it pains me to say it, Ron Paul has a point about efficiency. A number of estimates from various sources indicate that the military cannot amount for as much as 25% of budgeted expenditures and that finding $40-50 billion in savings, billion with a capital B, would be like finding change in your family room sofa. Defense procurement procedures and costs have been an open scandal for decades, but nothing ever seems to get done. Possibly because congressmen have a major vested interest in steering DOD money to their districts whether the money is spent on anything worthwhile or not.
Note: when it comes to defense spending, tax dollars are not real money. Tax dollars are only real money when they’re being spent on human services, because people who need those services don’t have good lobbyists.
Item: We spend more money by several multiples than any other country on earth, yet the guys at the shitty end of the stick still don’t seem to get what they need. Field-expedient armored vehicles (remember “hillbilly armor”?), guys having to buy their own body armor, units being issued Vietnam-era M-16s….etc. One would almost think there’s major league scamming involved. In the meantime, we are being told over and over that a reduction in defense spending to 2007 levels will put the country in grave peril.
Item: At some point even our defense establishment is going to have to shrink because people are eventually going to ask just what it is that our military is defending and why we’re spending money we don’t have to defend a very nebulous concept of “American interests”, whateverthehell they are. Example: funding government expenditures via borrowing from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), so we can spend megabucks to defend ourselves from that very same PRC. Perfectly logical.
Item: We really don’t have a clue as to what defense spending really is, because a lot of it is included in black program or out-and-out hidden in budgets for other departments. In short, the government lies like a rug about defense spending and it doesn’t matter who controls Congress or the White House.
Item: Defense spending has nothing to do with American strategy or interests, it’s a goal in and of itself. Whether it produces a stronger and more efficient military is irrelevant.
And at this point, I’m too tired and pissed to go on.
*Will get cheaper yet if Republican budget cutters have their way because we all have to make sacrifices to lower the deficit, right? You over there without any legs, you need to have some skin in the game!
;End rant
mclaren
You are wise, Bernard, not to believe Paul. He’s a sociopathic compulsive pathological liar who has billed his program of tax cuts for the rich paid for by slashing medicare and social security and other basic services as “deficit reduction” when in fact his scheme increases the deficit.
So we can see exactly where Paul is going on U.S. military spending. He’s going to claim he wants to cut spending…but he’ll actually wind up doing is slashing things like the VA, cutting veterans’ pensions (but only for enlisted personnel and up to major rank — you can bet the general officers still get platinum reitrement plans), refusing to pay anything for vets who lose limbs, reclassifying brain-damaged vets as suffering from “psychological disorders” and throwing ’em out on the streets — all to pay for even more and bigger and more pointless aircraft carriers and 707-based airborne laser systems and non-functional anti-ballistic missile systems and other crackpot Rube Goldberg superweapons that don’t actually work.
Paul is all about bait-and-switch, in other words. He’s done that with his so-called “deficit reduction plan” which actually increases the deficit. Now he’s going to do it with an alleged military budget cut which (mark my words) will actually increase military spending, but only on worthless non-working hardware like the F-35 and the Osprey, paid for by slashing pay and benefits and basic medical treatment for the average grunt on the ground.
Watch and see. I’ll bet Paul plans to “increase efficiency” by requiring the average grunt on the ground to pay for his own kevlar flak jacket, by phasing out the VA entirely (If you’re injured in combat, tough tit! That’s your problem, soldier!) and by eliminating “wasteful perks” like the subsidized PX stores and subsidized family housing for soldiers’ families. Oh, and of course by eliminating all those “wasteful” programs of psychological counseling for vets who return from combat with PTSD.
mclaren
@danielx:
On the contrary. “Defense” spending is just on the start of an exponential takeoff that will shoot up in a rocket ride to the stars, rivaling the records of the Voyager space probe.
Don’t believe me?
Take a look at the hard evidence. Obama eagerly signed off on an 8% increase in the U.S. military budget in a year when the core inflation rate was zero and in which the rest of the U.S. government spending was frozen.
Follow the math. 8% real inflation is a doubling time of 9 years, by the rule of 72. That means in 9 years, at this rate, the real proportion of GDP going to the U.S. military will double.
Now take a wider view. Look at the spending curve on the Department of Homeland Security. They’re on track to spend 63 billion this year. Their budget started out at 20 billion. That’s a 315% increase in just 11 years. That works out to an 11% compounded rate of annual increase. The DHS is on track to double in just 6.5 years. In 13 years, the DHS will be spending as much as the Pentagon does now, and in another 19 years, the DHS will be larger than the U.S. military — much larger.
And no surprise. Did you know that the DHS now has the biggest office building in Washington D.C., and, incidentally, in the world? Yes indeedy, the DHS headquarter is actually bigger than the Pentagon.
If you think U.S. military spending is going to decrease, you’re in for a rude shock. America is not going to leave Afghanistan in 2014, or 2024, or 2044. America is building more bases around the world, not less. The U.S. Africa command is now ramping up, spending massive amounts to staff vast new operations and huge new bases on that continent.
You don’t seem to have realized what’s gone on since 9/11. Basically, America grew so dependent on the Cold War that we couldn’t live without it. So after the Berlin Wall fell, America flailed around in a quandary. Then 9/11 hit, and eureka! Time for Cold War II! But this time, much more spending, with even more restrictions on freedom, and even more control by the U.S. military over society.
In the original Cold War, the U.S. military’s enemies were Communism and the Russian people, and they battled these implacable foes with pro-capitalist propaganda and limitless proliferation of nuclear weapons. In Cold War II (which began on 9/11), the U.S. military’s enemies are democracy and the American people, and they’re battling these implacable foes with pro-capitalist propaganda (see the latest batman movie, in which the Occupy movement gets cast as a bunch of terrorists controlled by a supervillain armed with a nuclear doomsday device) and limitless proliferation of surveillance and militarized police powers and prison-building.
America has basically decided to emulate the California model for economic development: instead of an education-technology complex, base your economy on a prison-police-surveillance complex.
Alas, the California economic model has been a disaster. The old California model, back in the 1950s and 1960s when California was known as “the education state,” spent vast amounts of money on schools and universities and created an educated workforce that was highly employable and generated huge amounts of revenue. So California regularly ran state surpluses.
Now, California spends vast amounts of cash on prisons and prison guards and parole officers and destroys its workforce by making vast number of people unemployable with insane “3 strikes” laws that dump them into prison. This sucks in revenue, instead of creating it, because instead of creating human capital you’re destroying it. So every year Califronia’s deficit worsens.
The same is happening now on a much larger scale with America as a whole. The more America spends on worthless internal Stasi organizations like the DHS and the TSA and the more we spend on a limitlessly increasing military to engage in endless unwinnable foreign wars, the worse America’s deficits will become every year. Because spending on homegrown secret police to spy on Americans and sending our soldiers to kill innocent women and children in the world’s poorest countries does nothing to increase American wealth or productivity or economic competitiveness.
Moreover, Cold War II will end the same way Cold War I ended. This time, America will fall apart, just as the Soviet Union did, of terminal sclerosis caused by a military-industrial parasite that took over the body of the organism and starved everything else until the organism died.
Sly
Getting efficiencies to emerge after cutting the top line only works if all the people involved in spending policy negotiations are fiscal technocrats who have no conflicts of interest, and not lobbyists who would try to shuffle spending toward projects that are profitable to those who pay their salary. And anyone with the even most superficial grasp of politics knows that it is the latter who control policy negotiations, and that they would simply use the negotiation process to funnel more money their way.
Norquist says it would work because he is a corporate lobbyist. His belief in fiscal bloodletting is pure cynicism; sure, he’ll talk a good game about cutting business subsidies, but ATR maintains a “No Tax” pledge, not a “No Corporate Welfare Pledge.” They don’t score votes based on spending policy. They don’t brow-beat legislators over spending policy and contribute to their challengers when they don’t tow the line. They don’t put their money where their mouth is, and for a group that cares such a great deal about the power of money, that should give severe pause to anyone who even thinks about taking them seriously.
Paul may be in the same category, or he may be a naive idiot. Either way, he shouldn’t be a U.S. Senator.
Batocchio
Sorry about your cat.
Norquist is such a destructive force I’d be extremely wary of even a small/short tactical alliance with him. Working with someone less evil, possibly, to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and without losing sight of the long game.
Peter
Oh boy, someone swiped Mclaren’s mess again.
Kurzleg
Let’s put this in context. The idea is that we cut spending in order to balance the budget, as if budget deficits created the recession in which we find ourselves. The right sees this as a perfect opportunity to cut “entitlements” (I hate that framing). The left sees an opportunity to cut defense spending. Right now, under the current economic circumstances, cutting either entitlement or defense spending is a bad idea.
Defense spending in particular funds what’s left of our manufacturing base, so cutting spending would have a harmful impact to that sector. It also funds a fair amount of engineering jobs, and it’s doubtful there are jobs in non-defense industries for these folks.
Long term, I’d be in favor of cutting back on global military reach. Closing bases would be where I’d start. I’m not sure of the monetary benefits, but I think it would have a positive impact on our interactions with other nations and also temper the impulse to send our soldiers hither and yon on missions of dubious merit. Cutting back on spending for military hardware is trickier due to the loss of manufacturing capacity and engineering jobs that can’t be transitioned to the non-defense world.
Kurzleg
Oh, and to your specific question, I’m very skeptical of such alliances. Elected Democrats haven’t done a particularly good job of using leverage to get things they want. I have my doubts that making common cause with Paul or Norquist or whomever would be a net positive experience. Also, it’s not clear that there’s a constituency within their party for reducing defense spending. I don’t think either of these guys or anyone else can deliver.
rea
@Weaselone: You mean like the spending on 11 massive, active duty Super-carriers that will likely end up littering the bottom of the Taiwan strait in the event of an actual conflict?
Highly unlikely that 11 carriers get sunk–we only deploy 1/3 of them at a time. 3 or 4 at most . . .
mechwarrior online
The left has fallen over themselves to embrace the most vile economic actors and decisions provided they bring in some social liberalism. So we are willing to do it, we just aren’t willing to do it unless it hits on social issues.
Barry
“What do you all think of that? I mean, I think most of us here would agree defense spending can be cut. Paul seems open to it, under the notion that cutting defense will lead to greater efficiencies. Am I misreading Paul, do you think? And if not, why not embrace that part of his agenda? Why not make common cause with him on this issue if not others?”
Because cutting military spending will not be done. If we agree to a package deal, he’ll happily betray us and trash the package.
someofparts
Locally, a friend of mine who worked very hard to keep fingerprint IDs from being attempted here told me that her only allies in the fight were libertarians. She said it was impossible to get other liberals concerned about insidious threats to our privacy. I don’t think she became BFFs with any of her tactical allies, but they kept the fingerprint ID from being done here, so it got the job done.