Morning Bell: Peace Doesn’t Keep Itself

Conn Carroll / October 05, 2010

Yesterday afternoon, President Barack Obama told his Economic Recovery Advisory Board: “I realize that we are facing an untenable fiscal situation. What I won’t do is cut back on investments like education.” Meanwhile what our Commander in Chief is very willing to cut is defense. In Bob Woodard’s new book Obama’s War , the President is reported telling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “I am not spending a trillion dollars” on war costs. And he told Vice President Joe Biden exactly why: “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

Since 1960, federal spending on education has tripled while test scores have remained flat. Meanwhile, even after factoring the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, our nation will only spend 4.9% of GDP on defense this year compared to a post-Word War II average of 6.5%. Education is arguably a local responsibility that should be controlled at the local level with as little federal interference as possible. And even if you think federal spending on education is necessary, it is not mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution, and the Department of Education did not even exist until President Jimmy Carter invented it. But the phrase “provide for the common defense” is right there in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

An explosion in domestic spending, particularly from entitlement programs–Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid–is the true source of our nation’s “untenable fiscal situation,” not defense.  Furthermore, our nation’s continued economic prosperity is entirely dependent on a peaceful world. With this in mind, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) President Arthur Brooks, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) Director William Kristol, and The Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner wrote in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal: (more…)