Source: The Hill, 8/29/11

Consensus member Brig. Gen. John Adams author’s an op-ed on controlling defense spending.

By Brig. Gen. John Adams

“For far too long the quality of our national security has been judged by the quantity of Pentagon spending and by the size of our armed forces.

The truth is, the more we spent like this, the more we have wasted and the less we actually thought about the meaning of national security.  This muscular approach is ill suited for the national security challenges facing the United States in the 21st Century.

Over the past 10 years, the DOD budget increased from $297 billion to $549 billion, not including the Overseas Contingency Operations, which alone stands at $159 billion for FY11.  Even if we factor in inflation, in an era of constant budget deficits, this rate of spending is unsustainable.

Out-of-control defense spending is a major cause for the calamitous state of our overall budget. This threatens the peace and prosperity that responsible national security planning is designed to protect.  We cannot allow the Pentagon to continue to spend exorbitant amounts of money without thought to overall strategy or long-term interests.

In the July agreement reached over the federal debt limit resulted in a $350 billion reduction in planned DOD spending over the next 10 years; with the possibility of a future $500 billion over the same period.

Yet, many of those who benefit from DOD business-as-usual argue that an $850 billion reduction in spending over 10 years would be devastating to our national security.

This argument is wrong…”

Click here to read the full op-ed…