(Click Photo To Enlarge)From The Weekly Standard:
A key to American recovery and reinvestment.
The politics of the current economic crisis are fluid -- the Bush administration's original diktats for bailing out the troubled financial sector and the auto industry have generated growing resistance -- but it's likely that Barack Obama will be able to produce a stimulus package quickly after his inauguration. Even House Republican leader Rep. John Boehner "believe[s] Washington has to act." Indeed, the stimulus debate that remains was succinctly framed by his counterpart in the upper house, Sen. Mitch McConnell: "The question is: How big and in what form?"
A key part of the answer on the spending side of the equation is increased defense spending, by at least $20 billion per year, particularly on procurement and personnel. These kinds of expenditures not only make economic good sense, but would help close the large and long-standing gap between U.S. strategy and military resources. If bridges need fixing, so too do the tools with which our military fights. A critical element in any recovery will be strengthening the foundations of the globalized economy, built upon U.S. worldwide security guarantees.
There is a strong historic correlation between defense spending and past recoveries. Increasing defense spending now would also satisfy the stimulus principles advanced by President-elect Obama: Military service and employment in the defense industry are jobs "that pay well and can't be outsourced."
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My Comment: An interesting defense of the Military Industrial Complex. Defense budgets do create jobs .... but like all make work projects from the government, it is never long term, and the benefits to society are limited.
