No sooner had the Republican celebration last November died down than leading conservative voices began warning the new House majority not to take this budget-cutting seriousness too far.
By all means, the newcomers were told, go after earmarks, soaring regulatory expenditures and the unfolding spending binge that Obamacare represents, but keep your mitts off the Pentagon.
“What the libertarian right and liberal left want . . . is nothing short of a reversal in America’s six-decade- long strategic posture,” declared an article in The Weekly Standard in a fairly typical attempt to discredit calls for budgetary restraint by the military.
So what if the “libertarian right and liberal left” seek a reversal of America’s strategic posture? When didn’t they? By contrast, most fiscal conservatives galvanized into action by the spending of the past two years have no interest in such a goal. To the extent they favor scrutiny of the Pentagon, they simply want its budget treated with the same skepticism applied to other programs.
Too many conservatives have the same attitude toward defense spending that liberals bring to education, argues Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman. “They believe their commitment is measured by spending.”
Coffman thinks that formula is wrongheaded, and he may be uniquely positioned to influence the debate among his fellow conservatives. A combat veteran who has been deployed overseas multiple times over more than three decades, first in the Army and then the Marines, the second-term Coffman serves on the House Armed Services Committee, a platform he is determined to use to promote his ideas.
Coffman has been steeped in military issues nearly his entire adult life, meaning he can’t be patronized by colleagues on the committee or by military officers and Pentagon officials. He believes the Pentagon budget can and must be trimmed, not merely because the towering deficit demands sacrifice on all fronts — and conservatives can’t expect liberals to compromise on social spending if they aren’t flexible as well — but also because the military itself could benefit from targeted pruning. “We can do this without compromising our war-making abilities,” Coffman insists.
His first order of business may be to support some of the modest cuts proposed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates last month. The Defense Department is “way too top-heavy,” Coffman maintains, in part because “the promotion system is moving too fast.” And Gates’ proposal begins to tackle the problem.
Coffman worries that representatives will be barred from offering amendments to defense spending on the House floor. But if that happens, he says, he’ll press for changes to the Defense Authorization Act from the Armed Services Committee.
“One of the things I’m looking at is abolishing the Selective Service,” he reveals. It’s a relatively small-ticket item — about $25 million, he says — but typical of programs that survive on inertia, not because they serve a useful purpose.
He’s not afraid of big-ticket, controversial targets, either, suggesting we reassess many of this nation’s forward bases, from Europe to Korea, to see if they’re still needed given “the lift capacity we have today.”
And unlike many members of the committee, including its other Colorado member, 5th District Republican Doug Lamborn, Coffman doesn’t have military facilities in his district he feels obliged to protect.
At more than $700 billion, the Pentagon budget represents about 20 percent of federal spending — a relatively modest figure by historical standards, as its defenders never fail to note. But that’s because entitlement spending has mushroomed so much faster, not because the Pentagon itself has been starved.
“This is something, for whatever time I have in Congress, I want to do,” Coffman says about bringing a fresh perspective to Republican deliberations on defense. “And I’ve got to deliver.”
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
