The Congressional Budget Office projects that if we keep
spending the way we have been, federal debt held by the public will
grow from around 60 percent of GDP to a whopping 82
percent of GDP over the next decade, with no end in sight. That’s
the sort of borrowing that can ruin a country’s economy.

Conservative Republicans are happy to talk about
cutting spending on the poor, education, and cowboy poetry
readings, but they insist that spending on defense and
homeland security
be increased.

Given that spending on defense and homeland security
accounts for a whopping 20 percent of the government’s budget,
that’s a non-starter. As with every other legitimate function of
government, we need to squeeze spending
down to the lowest level possible that still gets the job
done.

Here are three reasons conservatives – and all other
red-blooded Americans – should cut defense spending
now.

1. War is Over! Didn’t we just win – or at
least end – the war in Iraq? And aren’t we winding down in
Afghanistan? After World War II, Vietnam, and the end of the Cold
War, military spending got cut, as it should have been.

More to the point, spending on the military and
homeland security
grew by 90 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars since
2000. If al Qaeda and most international terrorists groups
have been largely vanquished, we should not just be bringing the
troops home, but dollars too.

Unless, that is, conservatives want to seriously argue
that nearly doubling outlays for the past decade haven’t yielded
results that would allow us to dial down
defense spending.

2. What price safety? The United States already
accounts for
about 45 percent of the planet’s military outlays – more than
the next 14 countries combined. Most of those countries are our
allies as well, so we should be able to stay safe while
reducing our military spending.

It’s a conservative truism that government programs, even ones
that are sanctioned by the constitution, tend to be
bloated, inefficient, and incompetent. Surely that same logic
applies to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland
Security. In fact, Republican Reps. John Mica and Paul Broun marked
the 10th anniversary of the Transportation Security
Administration with a report that concluded that after spending $56
billion in security measures, flying
is no safer now than it was before the 9/11 attacks.  

If conservatives can’t find wasteful spending and useless
programs in defense and homeland security to cut,
they’ve got bigger problems than terrorists to deal
with.

3. Attacking the Military-Industrial
Complex is a Republican Virtue – And Good Politics. It was
a Republican president – the war hero Dwight Eisenhower – who
sounded the alarm about the military-industrial complex’s insidious
ability to grow and grow like a cancer on the American
body politic. And right now, it’s Democrats such as Defense Secretary
Leon Panentta leading the cry for a blank check despite
admitting that there are tons of duplicative programs in his
department.

In his proposed 2011 budget, President Barack Obama
actually calls for bigger spending on defense and
homeland security than the Republicans do. Obama’s recent
announcement that he may trim
some planned increases over the next decade doesn’t change
that.

Americans are rightly tired not just of dubious, inconclusive
wars that have led to the death of thousands of Americans and
hundreds of thousands of others. A growing number of us
are tired
of out-of-control spending by a Washington elite that is totally
out of touch with everyday Americans.

If conservatives want to push forward on reducing
spending on Medicaid and other domestic programs, they should show
that they take their own limited government philosophy seriously by
pushing for defense cuts between now and the 2012
elections.

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Nick Gillespie is
editor in chief of Reason.com and Reason.tv, and the co-author of

The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can
Fix What’s Wrong with America. Follow him on Twitter:
@nickgillespie.

Meredith Bragg is a producer at Reason.tv, a 2010 finalist for
digital National Magazine Award for his video work, and an active musician and
performer.