Ryan Streeter
In his column today Rich Lowry urges Republicans not to turn Libya into a spending issue. He writes:
The United States goes bankrupt, it won’t be because of Libya, unless we add all eligible Libyans to our Social Security and Medicare rolls, and even then — at a population of fewer than 7 million — it will only augment current trends. America’s long-term debt is driven by ever-expanding entitlements. Already, this fiscal year, mandatory spending alone is projected to essentially match all federal revenues. We could eliminate the defense budget altogether, at about $700 billion, and still only cut the deficit in half.
This is a really good point. As Lowry goes on to note, in the 1960s both defense and non-defense spending were roughly 10% of GDP. Since then, defense spending has dropped by about half as a proportion of GDP, and non-defense spending has approximately doubled. As he says, in "our long-term fiscal crisis, guns are a pittance compared with all the butter."
Without troops on the ground, the reality is that Libya just isn't going to be that expensive, relatively speaking. There are plenty of problems with how the administration has handled Libya, but money for Tomahawk missiles and ships that were already in the region isn't one of them.
It's better if we keep our debate about spending focused instead of turning everything into a spending problem. When the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem is a nail. We need to be sure to have multiple tools in the toolbox.
Fred Barnes urged yesterday that Republicans be incrementalists on discretionary spending, chipping away rather than risking a shut-down by making demands that simply won't be met. Lowry shows in the excerpt above where the real issue lies: the entitlement spending that will be the target of reforms Paul Ryan will announce in the GOP budget next week.
Comments