Defense Spending Is Entitlement Spending

The Heritage Foundation's Baker Spring, Mackenzie Eaglen and James Jay Carafano argue that the U.S. should devote 4 percent of its GDP to defense en-perpetuity. Among the arguments they offer is this:

Pentagon spending is not the source of the federal government's current fiscal woes. Spending on the armed forces represents only about one-fifth of the federal budget and approximately half the average level of defense spending during the Cold War (as measured as a percentage of GDP). Defense has gradually declined as a percentage of GDP since the 1960s, while spending on the major entitlements (now about half the federal budget) have usually exceeded economic growth rates over the same period. Further, current projections show that spending on the major entitlements will far outpace economic growth and all components of government spending in the decades to come. Addressing entitlement spending, not defense expenditures, is the key long-term challenge for lawmakers.

When you consider the vast gulf between what America spends on her defense, and what every other nation does, it's pretty obvious that our defense spending is indeed entitlement spending. Only instead of American citizens enjoying the entitlement (after all, it is their money), it's South Korea, Taiwan, Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia and a variety of other American strategic dependencies that get the benefit of taxpayer largess.

Maybe this wealth transfer is justified. Maybe it isn't. But let's at least be honest about it.