On Memorial Day, presidential candidate Mitt Romney decided he would take advantage of the military holiday by pointing out the difference between his military plans and President Obama’s to the veterans in attendance.
“We have two courses we can follow,” Romney said. “One is to follow the pathway of Europe. To shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs.”
“The other,” Romney continued, “is to commit to preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world.”
If you were to take Romney’s words as gospel, you would believe our military strength is coming crashing down as Obama plans to cut its spending until nothing is left but a “hollow” force.
Now, it’s true that under the Budget Control Act, which was passed last year, the Pentagon may face up to $600 billion in cuts over the next decade. However, it might surprise most people to learn how far ahead the United States is leading its rivals when it comes to military spending.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, if you took the total military spending of the top 10 countries with the highest defense expenditures, the United States’ spending would make up 41 percent of that sum.
China, the closest rival to the United States in regards to military expenditures, makes up a mere eight percent of the total spending.
Wrap your mind around that for a second, and you may begin to understand how comfortably America sits as the leading military power.
Yet, this isn’t the first time Romney has attacked the President for being weak with the military. In January, Romney claimed the Navy is smaller than it has been since 1917 and the Air Force is smaller and older than any time since 1947. The claim earned Romney a rating of “Pants on Fire” from the fact-checking project Politi-Fact, which argued that the Navy had smaller numbers under the Bush administration and judging military strength based on numbers was misleading when technological prowess wasn’t taken into account.
So what does Romney have in mind?
Romney’s military plan would commit $4 of every $100 in the nation’s economy toward “core” defense spending, raising military spending by 61 percent over Obama’s plan at the end of a decade-long cycle, according to the Cato Institute. The plan is a testament to either hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance.
Since Obama has come into office, the rallying cause for Republicans has been their crusade to cut spending and balance the budget, yet their presidential candidate proposes to do just the opposite while still claiming to support a conservative agenda.
But maybe Romney knows what he is doing. According to a recent Gallup poll, 58 percent of veterans favor Romney over the 34 percent who favor Obama.
However, when polling stations survey the general American public on military spending, the numbers are quite different.
A survey conducted in April by the Center for Public Integrity, the Program for Public Consultation and the Stimson Center found that two-thirds of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats favored defense cuts when shown how large the defense budget is compared to other government departments. The participants even favored deeper cuts than those proposed by the Obama administration.
Such a poll demonstrates the disconnect between our politicians and the American public.
People understand that the defense spending can handle cuts and the money saved could be used to help fix many of our domestic problems, including paying off the deficit.
Maybe it’s time our leaders listen to the people who elect them.
David Scheuermann is a 20-year-old mass communication and computer science junior from Kenner. Follow him on Twitter at @TDR_dscheu.
____ Contact David Scheuermann at [email protected]