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Mr. President,
As someone who tends to worry first about national security
and
only secondly about domestic issues like taxes, it may surprise
you to learn that I — like millions of others in the national-security
community — strongly support your efforts to reduce the financial
burden imposed by the federal government on the American taxpayer.
This support is due to a conviction that your program for across-the-board
tax reductions offers not only a necessary stimulus to our civilian
economy and morally imperative relief for our countrymen from excessive
taxation. Your tax-cut plan also appears entirely consistent with,
indeed highly conducive to, the realization of another of your deeply
held priorities — namely, your commitment to rebuild the nation's
military so as to enable it to contend with the serious security
challenges we will likely face in the twenty-first century.
After all, to the extent that your program of tax simplification
and reductions translates into — as you have put it —
a "refund" for every American who pays taxes, the effect will assuredly
be to contribute to long-term economic growth. Such growth will,
in turn, add to future federal revenues and thereby facilitate the
very substantial recapitalization of the armed forces. This step
has been made absolutely necessary by roughly a decade of under-investment
in the uniformed services, a practice that has seriously degraded
the maintenance, training, and modernization activities critical
to the combat readiness of today's military — and tomorrow's.
As you know, responsible estimates vary greatly as to what it will
take to effect such a recapitalization. Among the most conservative
of these analyses has been that performed by the Congressional Budget
Office (CBO). The CBO has found that the necessary refurbishing
of the military will require a minimum additional $50 billion over
each of the next five years.
But I suspect that if the review of strategy and requirements
| “Your
tax-cut plan also appears entirely consistent with, indeed
highly conducive to, the realization of another of your
deeply held priorities — namely, your commitment
to rebuild the nation's military.” |
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recently launched by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is done in an
objective and rigorous manner, the actual figure will come closer
to $100 billion per year, perhaps more, over the next five years.
This would have to start in fiscal year 2002, following an $8-10
billion supplemental for the remaining months of the current fiscal
year.
While these sums seem large, even the higher add-ons would translate
into an allocation of roughly 4 percent of Gross Domestic Product
to national security. Four cents on the national wealth "dollar"
for safeguarding our freedoms at home and interests abroad hardly
seems excessive — especially since we have generally spent
a far higher percentage of GDP for these purposes since the end
of the Second World War.
Even in the unlikely event that the economy experiences more than
the two downturns over the next 10 years already built into the
CBO models of projected revenues, it would appear that federal-income
streams will be seen as adequate to meet the needs of both the Defense
Department and your other domestic priorities. This will be due
in part to the fact that the last Clinton budget contemplated a
$220-billion increase in defense spending over the next six-years.
As a result, there is a bipartisan "baseline" that goes some way
toward underwriting the needed recapitalization. Even legislators
who profess concern about the defense add-ons that you will need
to propose are likely to support the "out-year" increases President
Clinton had recommended, thus reducing the size of the total add-ons
under contention and facilitating the forging of political support
for their adoption.
If all else fails, the $1-trillion "rainy-day fund" that you have
proposed to insulate our society and economy from the dangers of
recession and other contingencies should be more than sufficient
to rebuild the military within available federal-government resources.
You are to be commended for the leadership you have shown to date
in setting the stage for achieving the fiscal and defense goals
you articulated during the presidential campaign and during your
first weeks in office. Those of us who look forward to helping you
succeed in your efforts to rebuild our defense posture appreciate
that your success in reducing taxes is a first and highly synergistic
step toward that goal. Consequently, you can count on us in the
national-security community to support you in both of these important
endeavors."
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