The War Against Austerity By Winslow T. Wheeler

The American Conservative

The War Against Austerity
By Winslow T. Wheeler
November 5, 2014 | http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-war-against-austerity/
From the president to the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and every Republican and Democrat at the top of Congress' defense committees, they all agree: "austerity" at the Pentagon must end. American forces are not getting enough money for training; weapons are short of maintenance; our forces are shrinking, and the defense industrial base is struggling. The Islamic State's success in the Middle East makes the argument for a bigger Pentagon budget compelling at the strategic level.
One au courant pundit articulated this conventional wisdom saying "the [budget] cuts intensify a growing global concern that America is in decline ^[1]."
Joining the crowd, President Obama said the "Draconian ^[2]" cuts in the Pentagon budget must be reversed.
The fix is in. The Pentagon is to be rescued from the spending cuts imposed by the three-year-old Budget Control Act of 2011 and its sequestration process. The rationale for reduction has been overtaken by world events, precipitous declines in military readiness, contraction of our forces and badly needed hardware modernization.
These arguments collapse under scrutiny.
What Austerity?