President Barack Obama’s 2011 fiscal budget projection was released Monday for initial debate and eventual approval. There are some obvious winners and losers in purely budgetary terms. Education, small businesses, stimulus projects, air travel, and other areas go extra funding. Big banks, the NASA Moon program, and moves to curtail climate change got less funding.

Usually the “winners” and “losers” in the budget are pretty cut and dry, but one area is always less easily categorized. The Pentagon and Department of Defense saw a 3.4 percent increase in the 2011 fiscal outlook, but it remains to be seen whether this is a good or a bad thing for the U.S.

In this time of financial upheaval and massive fiscal deficits so-called “spend thrift” politicians are clamoring to cut spending in virtually every direction. However very few, including the current Obama administration, seem willing to pull the plug on America’s inflated defense budget.

The United States needs to support and properly fund its military. Furthermore, the conflicts in which the U.S. is embroiled must be paid for before they can be successfully finished and eventually exited. But, the growth of our defense spending is the last thing this country needs in this time of economic hardship.

Unfortunately, after being saddled with two wars, which have already dragged on years longer than projected, this administration was grasping at straws in its attempt to cut fiscal corners.

According to The Washington Post, the White House is asking for $708 billion for the Department of Defense: $549 billion for base operations, and $159 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama is also hoping to garner an extra $33 billion to fund the cost of surging 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan.

These expenses are small compared to the overall economy, but as parts of the budget they represent massive sunk costs.

Reuters ran a column outlining areas where the White House was able to cut back on its budget: $2.5 billion saved on the C-17 transport program, $435 million in cuts to F-35 engine development, $3.8 billion in cuts to development of new Naval command ships, etc. These cuts are significant for those directly involved in the programs, but they represent a proverbial drop in the ocean when compared to the costs we simply cannot avoid.

The president was able to cut tens of billions of dollars for programs which were deemed too unimportant, insignificant, or inefficient to continue. After all of that he was left with $159 billion in sunk Afghanistan and Iraq costs, and a $549 billion budget just to cover the Defense Department’s basic operations.

America’s defense budget has become such an inflated monster in the past 20 years that its acceleration can barely be tolerated. According to GlobalIssues.org, the past decade alone has seen military expense jump from less than $400 billion annually to the current $700 billion figure.

How can the U.S. afford to fund its own necessary programs when so much money goes into defense? The U.S. military is already by far the most powerful and impressive in the world, yet for all its might it cannot finish off conflicts with enemies who are completely out-gunned. Our conventional standing army is a behemoth in the field, but it is never deployed en masse into any situation, and most of its capacity lays dormant, soaking up tax dollars in the process.

According to the CIA World Factbook, the world spends roughly 2 percent of its GDP on defense and military expenditures. The proportion in the United States is closer to 5 percent of GDP. That only accounts for explicit expenses, which do not include discretionary funding.

The United States spends more on defense than nearly every other nation in the world combined; a total in no way representative of our territory or population.

The United States does not need to shut down the military, and it does not need to simply pack up and leave Afghanistan and Iraq at a moments notice. What it needs to do is build in a way of scaling down its expenses, gradually decreasing its size and cost inefficiencies, and making the Department of Defense a responsible part of the budget – rather than a black box where tax money disappears forever.

Neither party has ever brought up the possibility of scaling back the size of our military. Barack Obama – either the progressive candidate and Senator, or the centrist President – has never given it public support. Scaling back our military seems like the least likely policy change we will see out of Washington. Since it represents one of the largest segments of our budget, perhaps now is the finally the time for such a change.

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