By Pat Condon

When discussion about the Department of Defense (DoD) budget takes place, it frequently revolves around “unaffordability” – “we can’t afford to spend this much on the war in Iraq” – “that airplane is too expensive – we can’t afford it” - “we can’t afford to spend so much on healthcare for our men and women in the Armed Forces.” Well, nonsense! There is no question that providing for our nation’s defense costs a lot, but affordability simply boils down to a matter of priorities. In the budget battles inside of the federal government, one frequently hears that the so-called “entitlement” programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and others) constitute mandatory spending, and any budget adjustments or affordability issues must be dealt with in the discretionary spending categories, including defense. Therefore, from a priority standpoint, the “entitlement” programs become top priority, and everything else must scrap for the remainder within the budget top-line. In the Fiscal Year 2009 federal budget request, mandatory or entitlement spending takes nearly 53% of the budget, and all defense related spending accounts for less than 24%.

Let’s stop a moment and try to look at this from an objective viewpoint. The place to start is the Constitution of the United States and what it says the role of the federal government is. The Constitution lays out very few responsibilities for the federal government, but it explicitly says, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States....” Note that it does not say, “...provide welfare to the people of the United States.” It says, “...provide for the...general welfare of the United States....” In this sense, it means that the federal government is responsible for taking steps to ensure that the United States has sufficient infrastructure, rules of commerce, and regulations to provide the opportunity for prosperity and “general welfare.” It does not mean the establishment of welfare programs as they exist today. The Constitution is also very explicit concerning the role of the Congress to “...provide for the common Defence...of the United States....” Today that, for the most part, is the job of the Department of Defense. Nowhere does the Constitution say that the federal government should establish and fund many of the social programs that make up the bulk of what have become “entitlement” programs. Why, then, is the funding of an explicit responsibility of the federal government (defense of our country) regarded as discretionary and the funding of something that is not an explicit responsibility (social programs) regarded as mandatory? I am not entitled to government sponsored welfare. I am not entitled to government provided housing. I am not entitled to government sponsored or provided healthcare insurance. I am not entitled to social security. I am not entitled to the plethora of government sponsored programs that make up the mandatory spending group. I am entitled to a strong national defense and protection from our enemies, because the U.S. Constitution says so.

It is time for Americans to demand that our elected politicians pay attention to what their primary responsibilities are – to demand that responsibilities dictated by our Constitution for the federal government are treated as mandatory when it comes to budget allocations. It is interesting that we hear so much about the first and second, and sometimes the fifth, amendments to our Constitution but never about the tenth. Look it up sometime, and then insist that our politicians pay attention to first priorities first. We can afford any level of defense that we want – we just have to make it a priority as the Constitution would dictate. If we continue to treat our national defense as a “nice to have” and our social programs as mandatory, we may one day discover that those social programs are not being run by our government, but by someone else’s.