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February 25, 2007
Budget brawl
Earlier this month, President Bush sent his proposed budget for FY 2008 to Congress. At this point, the “proposed” aspect of the $2.9 trillion, 2500 page document should be emphasized. By the time Congress gets done with it, the federal budget will likely bear little resemblance to what the Bush administration has composed. Even so, the president's budget for the fiscal year starting on October 1 is a useful guide to his foreign policy priorities, and it will form the starting point for much of Congress' foreign policy activity in the coming months.
The 2008 budget is the first to include spending requests for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; in previous years, funding for these wars took the form of emergency supplemental requests that were separate from the administration's formal budget requests. This was always a source of contention for many senators and congressmen, who felt that these supplemental funding requests disconnected the conflicts from the formal budgetary process, effectively hiding their true cost. According to Rob Portman, the Bush administration's budget director, the change this year is part of the administration's “good-faith effort to be as transparent as possible.” The administration has asked for $145.2 billion to fund the “Global War on Terror” in 2008 and $99.6 billion in 2007, in addition to the $70 billion already allocated for use this year. For 2007, $2.4 billion would be allocated to the Pentagon organization tasked with combating roadside bombs, with an additional $4 billion for 2008.
Other Pentagon funding for 2008 would total $481.4 billion, an increase of 12% over the budgeted amount for 2007. This includes funding for weapons systems that are either under development or have just entered service, such as $4.6 billion for the Air Force's F-22 fighter, $3 billion for the Navy's DDG-1000 destroyer, $2.6 billion for the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey, and $2.5 billion for the Navy's Virginia-class attack submarine. It also includes $315 million for a new Air Force tanker, $310 million to deploy a missile defense site in Europe, $175 million for a conventional version of the submarine-launched Trident missile. From an organizational perspective, the budget calls for $12 billion toward increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 troops over the next five years and $7.6 billion toward transforming the Army from a Cold War, division-centric force to a modular force consisting of smaller, more mobile brigades.
Funding for the State Department and other international programs would see an increase of 22% over its 2007 level, to $35 billion. This figure includes nearly $1.4 billion for programs to support Iraq's political, security, and economic goals and a similar amount to stimulate economic and political development in Afghanistan. Other programs that would see significant budget increases include the Millennium Challenge Corporation (with an increase of 164%), the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (with an increase of 124%), embassy security (with an increase of 35%), the Economic Support Fund (with an increase of 27%), and diplomatic and consular programs (with an increase of 11%). Programs that would experience cuts include development assistance (with a cut of 31%), the Andean Counterdrug Initiative (with a cut of 22%), assistance for states of the former Soviet Union (with a cut of 19%), international disaster and famine assistance (with a cut of 15%) and programs involving international narcotics and law enforcement (with a cut of 10%).
The administration's proposal would increase the Energy Department's budget to $24.3 billion, up nearly 7 percent from the current appropriation. Portions of the budget are allocated to fund programs related to energy security, including $385 million for the Coal Research Initiative, $309 million for the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, $179 million for the Biofuels Initiative, $148 million for the Solar America Initiative, and $81 million to accelerate research on advanced hybrid vehicles. The budget would also increase funding for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by 60 percent, to $332 million, which will effectively double the capacity of the Reserve from 727 million barrels to 1.5 billion barrels. The budget for the Department's National Nuclear Security Administration would be raised from $9.2 billion to $9.4 billion, of which $88.8 million would go toward the development of a “reliable replacement warhead” for use on submarine-based ballistic missiles.
The Department of Homeland Security would see its budget increased from $32 billion to $34.3 billion. Big winners in the Department would include customs and border protection (with a budget increase of 36%), the Secret Service (with an increase of 10%), and immigration and customs enforcement (with an increase of 8%). The main losers would be citizenship and immigration services (with a budget cut of 84%) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (with a cut of 35%). In addition, the budget cuts approximately $1.2 billion in grants for anti-terrorism, law enforcement, firefighters and emergency medical teams to states and cities.
As might be expected, the president's budget has met its fair share of criticism from legislators, who each have their own individual interests (and constituents) to keep happy. “What [the president is] saying is, basically you can have it all—you can spend the money, especially on defense and the war, and you can cut every tax, and it all works,'' noted Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “But in the real world, it doesn't work out.” In response to cuts in the Homeland Security budget, Representative David E. Price (D-N.C.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, accused the White House of “depriving our communities of the critical support they need to operate in the post-9/11 world.” Not all of the commentary was negative, however. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said, “some elements of [the Department of Energy's] new budget request, such as increases for biomass and biofuels R&D, are positive.” Representative John Boehner (R-OH), Minority Leader in the House, not surprisingly lauded the president's budget for its efforts to avoid tax increases and to limit spending: “It is entirely possible for us to balance the budget by holding the line on spending and growing our economy.”
The size and complexity of the president's budget naturally raise suspicions that accounting tricks or hidden programs may lie buried throughout. This is especially true of funding for the Defense Department and the “Global War on Terror,” which together constitute over 21% of the total budget request. Of the funds requested to fight the “Global War on Terror,” some money is specifically designated to replace military equipment that has worn out or been lost in action. According to Steven M. Kosiak, a military budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the Air Force would receive a portion of that amount ($400 million) for two F-35s, ostensibly to replace planes that were lost in combat. But the F-35 is an advanced fighter that is still under development. It is years away from being deployed to active duty units, and in theory at least, it is impossible that any could have been lost (much less used) in the “Global War on Terror.” Such peculiarities have led some to suggest that the administration is deliberately trying to obfuscate funding for new weapons programs by incorporating their costs into funding requests for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The reality of the Bush administration's budget, and the reality of all budgets submitted by the executive branch, is that it is a political document as much as a policy one. For the first time in six years, the dominant party in Congress is not the same as the one that holds the White House. This reality, plus the very real threat that legislators may attempt to use budgetary tools to affect the president's Iraq policy, should make the forthcoming budgetary process more exciting than most. It also means that the ultimate federal budget for FY 2008 will bear little resemblance to the proposal submitted this month by the president. As the Constitution makes clear, the greatest power entrusted to the legislature is that of raising and appropriating public funds. Given years of frustration over the president's expansive interpretation of his foreign policy prerogatives, Congressional Democrats will be keen to finally exert the power that is so unambiguously theirs to wield.
Foreign Policy Association, 22 February 2007
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February 06, 2007
Obama's challenge
As events of recent weeks have only reiterated, Barack Obama is the early superstar of the 2008 presidential race. The charismatic Illinois senator draws massive and enthusiastic crowds wherever he speaks, and the media seems to hang on his every public utterance. The greatest validation of his superstar status, however, are the increasing attempts to puncture his aura of invincibility. Liberal Democrats claim that Obama has betrayed his potential to become their ideological standard-bearer in Congress. Moderate Democrats claim he’s too liberal. And so far, Republicans only seem able to attack Barack Hussein Obama for his middle name.
The most persistent of these emerging critiques—and the one favored by the politicians, consultants, and pundits that act as guardians of the reigning political establishment—is that Obama is inexperienced and, by extension, lacks policy substance. To be sure, the length of Obama’s tenure in office (four years in the U.S. Senate, by 2008) is comparatively brief; no amount of vitriol by either his supporters or detractors will change that. But the suggestion that Obama is in some way “unsubstantial” lacks any basis in reality. Instead of disparaging the senator, this particular line of criticism reflects the fundamentally stale nature of the reigning political establishment in this country and the challenge that Obama poses to it.
Consider the realm of foreign policy, where much of the criticism about Obama purported lack of substance falls. For one thing, Obama is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which means that he has about as much exposure to the intricacies of international relations than any politician outside of the federal executive branch can reasonably expect to have. No senator, representative, or governor can claim an appreciably greater degree of professional familiarity in matters of foreign policy than Obama.
In a more specific sense, Obama has produced a legislative record that clearly reflects his own foreign policy instincts. In the last session of Congress, he teamed with Republican Richard Lugar—long a paragon of sensible, non-ideological thinking in terms of foreign policy—to sponsor legislation to help secure loose stockpiles of conventional weapons around the world. Their bill would build upon the very successful Nunn-Lugar program, which provides funding and expertise to help states of the former Soviet Union secure loose nuclear weapons and material.
Obama has also sponsored a variety of bills relating to energy security. One such proposal would mandate automatic, annual increases in fuel economy standards, while another would encourage domestic automakers to produce more hybrid cars by offering federal assistance to defray the costs of employee health care. These bills, like many others sponsored by Obama, share a few common traits. Each one is eminently sensible, easily capable of passage in a closely split Congress, and largely devoid of aspirations for widespread attention or popular celebrity.
Obama’s detractors may overlook his legislative record out of negligence or ignorance. But the fact that his record is not widely known or acknowledged speaks volumes. Obama had become something of a political superstar even before he entered the Senate. He arrived in Washington with very high expectations, and it would have been relatively easy for him capitalize on such initial popularity by championing a single, prominent issue as his own. But as a member of the minority party in the Senate—and the lowest-ranking member, at that—such outspoken behavior likely would have been futile and certainly would have been interpreted as self-serving. In other words, it would have been precisely the kind of behavior expected of a typical, ladder-climbing politician who comes to Washington carrying lofty expectations and even loftier ambitions.
Obama’s patient, quiet legislative record in the realm of foreign policy, then, suggests a greater taste for sensible pragmatism than for rote partisanship. In Washington, this is a peculiar trait, and it is certainly not one expected of a politician favored for higher office. For those that make their livelihoods perpetuating the reigning political establishment—by fighting the same fights, along the same partisan lines, with the same cast of characters, over and over again—Obama represents something of a paradox, and a challenge. The paradox is that he is a politician of tremendous natural talent, with a large and growing base of support, yet he refuses to fight the partisan battles in the manner that has been expected of him. The challenge is that Obama’s way of doing things may work better.
The critique about Obama’s lack of experience is certainly valid, and now that he is a member of the majority party in the Senate—and an increasingly prominent one, at that—the expectations for him to produce legislation that is both sensible and successful will be greater than ever. But the claim that Obama lacks policy substance is a criticism of the weakest standard. Instead of tarnishing the senator, this line of criticism only reflects Obama’s ability to confound the reigning political establishment. In the process, Obama is challenging the pre-conceived notions about how a successful politician is supposed to behave.
Providence Journal, 6 February 2007
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