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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 08/04
A Unified Security Budget for the United States
Marcus Corbin and Miriam Pemberton
Center for Defense Information
March 2003
Abstract
Since September 11, 2001, the question of how to provide for our security has loomed large over our national life. Many of the Bush administration’s answers to this question have come under intense challenge–from the doctrine of preventive war to the development of new designs for “usable” nuclear weapons to the choice of war with Iraq as the centerpiece of its war on terrorism. But until recently one aspect of the administration’s strategy has gone virtually unchallenged, namely its military budgets and the spending priorities contained within them. From 2000 to 2004, these budgets have increased by more than 50%. Congress has approved each of these budgets, and virtually the entire menu of programs specified in them, with hardly a whisper of debate.
Ever–increasing budget deficit projections have finally begun to make security budget priorities a permissible topic of conversation among lawmakers. In mid–February the House Speaker declared all parts of the budget “on the table” for cuts, including the military, and soon thereafter the administration abruptly canceled the Army’s long–running Comanche helicopter program.
The Task Force on A Unified Security Budget for the United States, drawing on the knowledge of analysts with expertise in different dimensions of the security challenge, welcomes the opening of this overdue debate, and offers this contribution to help point it in the right direction.
