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Wanna know how broken and captured Washington is by the Pentagon and the corruption of our nation's "defense" budget? Well, look no further than the soon to be enacted budget "deal." Let me explain. <long thread>
You're no doubt hearing a lot of crowing from Democrats about how the deal they struck with Trump gives more money to "non-defense" spending than to "defense." Let's be clear that by every measure, save the one they're using, that's simply not true. 2/
This is gonna get a little wonky but stick with me. In 2011, Congress passed the Budget Control Act, the BCA, as part of a deal with @BarackObama. The BCA capped federal spending for a decade. When the "supercommittee" the BCA created failed, those caps went even lower. 3/
In other words it became law to not spend more than a certain amount of money every year. The caps were divided with a firewall between "defense" (budget category 050 or the Pentagon+nukes+some other national security programs) and EVERYTHING else in the discretionary budget. 4/
An often missed reality is that those caps really only cut 1 year (fy12) and then rose every year at roughly inflation. The caps were really just a reset and a freeze on federal spending. Nonetheless they would have been difficult/painful to realize in that first year. 5/
So to get around that, every couple of years, Congress and the White House has agreed to a spending "deal" to raise the cuts, change the law, and avoid the very fiscal discipline they imposed upon themselves. The "cuts" have mostly never happened. 6/
I say mostly because in truth, the part of the federal government that isn't the Pentagon has seen real cuts and impacts due to upwards pressure on that bucket of "non-defense" spending. Primarily from the VA but also from other agencies, holding steady required more $. 7/
Now here's where we get to this all being bullshit about how hard life has been for the Pentagon. From day 1, the Pentagon has avoided any sort of pain from its cuts. First and foremost it has used a massive slushfund called the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account. 8/
OCO has always allowed the Pentagon to get 10s of billions of $$$ that don't count against their "cap." When you add to that the decreases in costs from drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has massively gained available funding, even before Trump's spending orgy. 9/
And then of course Trump won, the Pentagon got a huge spending increase, and for the first time, when the caps were raised, the Pentagon got even more money than the entire rest of gov't (aka 'non-defense' spending) in the last budget deal. 10/
Which brings us to the latest budget deal, the one we're supposed to like because it gives "more" money to the entire rest of gov't combined, compared to the Pentagon. Except it doesn't. Let's do the math. 11/
Under the BCA, aka the current law, the spending "caps" for fiscal year 2020 are $576.2b for defense and $543.2b. In fy21 they're $590.2b and $554.9b. So let's pause right there and understand that "defense" is already getting $33 and $35b more per year than everything else. 12/
But that's not actually where the funny math comes in! Remember, this isn't the first time Congress has raised the caps. When they first did in 2013, they established a concept of parity, meaning for every $1 of extra money above the caps for the defense, non-defense got $1. 13/
By and large, that concept held, until the last budget deal when the increases for the Pentagon were larger than the rest of gov't. The Dems were at a disadvantage in those negotiations with little leverage and could be forgiven as doing the best they could. 14/
Which brings us to now. Let's start by understanding that the Dems now have exactly as much leverage as the GOP did when they started this whole mess after the 2010 tea party wave, ie they control the House and the other party has the Senate and White House. 15/
We're being asked to believe that they used that advantageous petition to not just return to parity, but to do better! Except it's not true. To make this claim, Dems are comparing how much this 'deal' raises spending compared to current spending (fy19). 16/
That might seem reasonable, but that's never been the standard. The standard has always been how much the caps were being raised. You can look back at this old Senate Budget Committee analysis of the first budget deal to see what I mean. budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/… 17/
Under the standard Dems are now using, they're claiming that non-defense is going up by $24.5b in fy20 & $29.5b in fy21. That's compared to $19.5b & $24.5b for defense. Of course, there's also OCO. Add that in and non-defense goes up $27b & $29.b compared to $22b & 24.5b. 18/
That's not bad, right? But remember, that's not the historical standard. What happens if you compare the budget "deal" levels to the actual caps in the law. A funny thing happens. The supposed gains for non-defense compared to defense, not only disappear, they reverse. 19/
The defense levels in this deal represent a $90.3b fy20 and $81.3b hike. Compare that to a $78.3b and $71.6b hike for non-defense. That's $171.6b for the Pentagon compared to $149.9b for everything else in the gov't. The Pentagon gets an extra $21.7 billion. 20/
But wait! What about OCO? Add that in and the Pentagon's hike over current law rockets up by $161.8b in fy20 and $150.3b in fy21. A whopping $312.1b in spending above the level set in current law by Congress 8 years ago. Poverty at the Pentagon indeed. 21/
But to be fair, there is also some OCO in the rest of gov't (the State Dept) mostly, $8b/year. Add that to the entire rest of gov't, and this deal hikes their balance sheet by $165.9b, a little over half of what the Pentagon is getting in its hike. HALF! 53% to be exact. 22/
But to be REALLY fair, the deal does include some $ for other spending items in the 'non-defense' budget as well. We've never included this in previous deals as it's for things like wildfires, hurricanes, & other unforeseen emergencies, but it's in the deal so let's count it. 23/
The deal appears to include $24b for "disaster" funding, $4.7b for wildfires, $2.5b for the census, & $4.8b for other smaller items. all told, that's an extra $36b over two years in non-defense spending. Add that to the base total and you get $201.9b in total spending hikes. 24/
So now let's compare the $201.9b in hikes for the entire rest of gov't outside of the Pentagon and affiliated programs at $201.9b with the hike in defense spending of $312.1b. That's a relative hike of $110.2 BILLION MORE for the Pentagon over the next two years. 25/
Only in Washington and the total and utter dysfunction and corruption of our nation's defense budget could getting $110.2 billion more be considered getting less. 26/
Of course there is one other way you could compare this, simply looking at real numbers rather than numbers relative to a baseline. So let's do that since we're 27 tweets in already. 27/
Under this deal, the Pentagon and its affiliated programs will get $1.48 TRILLION dollars over the next two years. The entire rest of gov't, including the VA btw, will get $1.30 trillion. That's $178.6 BILLION more for the Pentagon than the whole rest of gov't. 28/
So for the love of god, can we all stop pretending like this is somehow anything other than a continued orgy of unprecedented, wasteful, and obscene spending at the Pentagon. 29/end
