$1.5 Trillion for Defense Isn’t Enough? : Clinton is kowtowing to conservatives at the cost of his domestic agenda.

President Clinton has decided that the Pentagon needs more than the $1.5 trillion it had planned to spend over the next six years. He agreed to add $25 billion to help keep the troops off food stamps and ready to fight. Republicans--those implacable crusaders against big government--say this isn’t enough; the world’s most costly bureaucracy needs even more money. Say what?

This year, the country will spend more than $270 billion on national defense--almost as much as the rest of the world combined. (With our allies, we consume more than 80% of the world’s military spending.) Russia’s collapsing forces will make do with less than $20 billion. All of the so-called rogue nations--North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Cuba--are cutting back already antiquated military forces. The Brookings Institution estimates we spend more than $50 billion a year on forces arrayed to defend South Korea against North Korea. The South Koreans spend about $12 billion. Nearing collapse, the North has cut its military spending to less than $2 billion. Here, it is a scandal when a handful of American military families use food stamps. In North Korea, the soldiers struggle simply to find food.

Republicans charge that the Pentagon doesn’t have enough money to fight two Persian Gulf-sized wars on opposite sides of the globe, at once, without allies. That might be worrisome, except that Defense Secretary William Perry admitted last spring that the Pentagon can’t identify two potentially hostile countries with the capacity that Iraq possessed before the Gulf War--forces that we eviscerated in 44 days using 20% of our forces.

The military is involved in peacekeeping operations in Haiti, Rwanda and the Gulf for which it wants more money. As Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) commented, the $270 billion we will spend this year simply keeps the Pentagon on retainer, like a lawyer. Every time we ask it to do something, it bills extra by the hour.

That is how the bogus “readiness” issue arose. Last year, Congress dithered a few months before giving the military an extra billion or so to pay for moving troops to Rwanda and Haiti. So the Pentagon postponed a round of routine exercises for backup military units, reducing the bureaucratic measure of their readiness. Republicans howled that the military was going “hollow.” But it is the threat, not the military, that is hollow.

Conservatives of both parties have been shameless in this debate. They accuse the President both of “gutting” the military and of using it too much. They want a military that costs more and does less. The Pentagon--the largest source of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government--has become the public-works program conservatives can love. Republicans campaign to spend more money on “Star Wars.” Soon-to-be House Speaker Newt Gingrich says that big government can’t do anything right, while arguing that the Pentagon, the largest bureaucracy of all, can create and run a flawless missile-defense system--if we just give it a few billions more.

We pay dearly for this folly. Under current laws, every additional dollar given to the military must be cut from domestic programs. The $25 billion Clinton just approved adds 1% to Pentagon spending over six years. But on the domestic side, it virtually guts what is left of new spending on education and training, roads and sewers, research and development that the President rightly said were vital to our economic future.

What the President ought to do is take a broom to the Pentagon stables. Dispatch Vice President Al Gore and his “reinventing government” team to the Pentagon, which writes seven of 10 federal paychecks. Stop building new weapons systems that were designed for a Cold War that is no more. Pare the active-duty forces down to sensible numbers--1 million or so; cut the civilian bureaucrats proportionately. We still could sustain the most powerful military in the world, spending four times what any of our allies spend and 10 or more times what any potential adversary does. It would also free up as much as $100 billion a year to get the country back on track.

But this debate isn’t about military prowess; it is about politics. When Republicans raise the ante, the President tries to look strong by throwing more money in the pot. With Pentagon bureaucrats finagling to get more money and Republican presidential wannabes prating about a “hollow military,” the stakes keep going up. The Pentagon will cash in. And our children will be stuck with the tab.