The Obama administration on Friday lifted the covers on its compromise budget proposal for fiscal year 2014. While Obama's blueprint would slash the national debt by a projected $1.8 trillion over the next decade (bringing the total reductions since 2011 to $4.3 trillion) through painful changes to Social Security and Medicare, Republicans are predictably balking at Obama's call for $580 billion in new tax revenue. Despite the administration's up-front concessions on spending, GOP leaders including John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor continue to repeat their talking points that "the President got his tax hikes in January" and "the discussion about revenue is over."

But as a quick glance at U.S. budgets past and future shows, the discussion over tax revenue should be far from over. For starters, thanks to two wars, the new unfunded Medicare prescription drug program and the government responses to the 2008 financial meltdown, federal spending surged over the previous decade even as tax revenue as a percentage of the U.S. economy hit 60 year lows. And looking ahead, the U.S. Treasury will need to raise revenues higher than the historical average not just to fill the massive hole left by the Naughts, but to fund $2 trillion more in war-related spending, to address the aging of the U.S. population and to meet the public's demands for more, not less, spending across almost every area of government.

Here are 10 reasons why Uncle Sam needs more tax revenue. (Click a link to jump to the details for each.)

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So Republicans are feeling the public (and private) opinion pressure enough to pretend to moderate the effects of the sequester (when really, they're just trying to save their largest campaign contributors). Yet despite their vulnerability, Obama is once again offering up Social Security and Medicare as a sacrifice:

(Reuters) - Congressional Republicans announced a plan on Monday to avoid a government shutdown later this month, seeking to calm the waters after months of budget fights that ended in a failure last week to halt damaging spending cuts.

Just three days into the $85 billion of automatic "sequester" cuts, Republicans in the House of Representatives turned their attention to the next fiscal deadline: the March 27 expiration of funding for government agencies and programs.

[...] After bruising encounters last year over the fiscal cliff of broad tax increases and spending cuts, and now sequestration, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have lost some of their appetite - at least temporarily - for more confrontation and want to get through March without having to fight about how to keep government funded.

The bill gives some relief to the Defense Department, military construction and the Veterans Administration, but Democrats complained that it does not do enough to help domestic programs also hit by the sequester cuts that started Friday.

Sounding conciliatory, President Barack Obama said he was not giving up on trying to work with Republicans to reduce the deficit.

"I will continue to seek out partners on the other side of the aisle so that we can create the kind of balanced approach of spending cuts, revenues, entitlement reform that everybody knows is the right way to do things," he said at the start of a cabinet meeting.

In phone calls with lawmakers at the weekend, Obama raised anew the issue of cutting entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security as a way out of the budget cuts. Reforming the social safety net is a pet project of Republicans.

Uh, not just the Republicans. The Republicans are worried, yet instead of kicking them when they're down, and putting the squeeze on to get additional tax revenue, Obama offers up the safety net as an enticement. I'm not surprised, of course. But I'm still furious.

The fiscal cliff once again dominated the Sunday morning talk shows (which isn't a surprise), and entitlement cuts were indeed a focal point by the lead bobblehead of each show. But what I found most offensive was that not one Villager or politician discussed cuts to defense spending as a solution for the Mayan Apocalypse of the federal deficit. In part, the reason the fiscal cliff is coming is because the sequester deal has massive cuts to defense spending, 2013 which is freaking out Republicans.

Defense Spending: This is an area where Republicans are likely to launch a major opposition campaign because defense programs would receive a 9.4 to 10 percent reduction from its 2013 budget of $580 billion, or about $55 billion. Although the president exempted military personnel pay and benefits, defense programs, including weapons and procurement programs, are subject to half of the automatic budget cuts, even though defense programs are about one-fifth of the federal budget. States that have a very large defense presence have been very vocal about opposing these cuts.

The fact that entitlement benefits aren't part of the sequester probably has Republicans really angry since they can't use that as leverage in this debate. But if pols and pinheads are so worried about the federal deficit, then why aren't defense cuts a top priority? What we hear instead is that severe cuts to federal spending, coupled with bad job growth and raised taxes, will result in a deep financial recession. While the president won on raising tax rates, that isn't the manna from heaven that will fix our economic problems if Obama includes benefit cuts to Medicare and Medicaid for a small raise in rates. Raising the retirement age doesn't do a thing to help lower federal deficits, so why exactly are Republicans asking for it -- and why does it appear that the president is willing to acquiesce to those demands? Since 'defense" makes up over almost 20% of the federal budget expenditures, why is it off limits in this discussion?

On Face The Nation, Bob Shieffer didn't bring up cuts in defense spending once and the only mention I see of it was by cranky ex-Sen. Simpson calling earned benefits/entitlements a 'destructive force" which would hurt defense spending

SCHIEFFER: So you think they've got to do that. But also, don't you think that the Democrats are going to have to agree to some entitlement reforms?

SIMPSON: ...But, yes, I mean, the bizarre thing, not touching the entitlements. The entitlements are the engine on the train driving us to the cliff. They were on automatic pilot. Health care, it doesn't matter what you call it, is on automatic pilot. And it's going to squeeze out all the discretionary budget -- defense, R&D research, all the things you love. Erskine and I always say, what do you love? And they'll name something and we say forget it because this is wiping everything. It's just a destructive force. And no cost containment till down the road..

What's destructive, Mr. Simpson, are austerity measures being forced upon the people during a recession and after an economic downturn.

On Meet The Press, defense spending was not mentioned once, but cuts to entitlements was at center stage, with the host of MTP seemingly negotiating with Republicans for 'big cuts" to entitlements

GREGORY: All right. Well, senator, let me just-- I want to pin you down on one point about Medicare. You say you want to basically put off this discussion until later. But bottom line, should the Medicare eligibility age go up? Should there be means testing to really get at the benefits side, if you’re going to shore this program up, because as you say, 12 years before it runs out of money?

The segment on the fiscal cliff went mostly like that and again, no mention if Republicans would accept big cuts in defense to fight off rate hikes.

On Fox News Sunday, neither Chris Wallace, Senators Corker or Schumer mentioned cutting defense spending when talking about a fiscal deal. They did, however, go large on entitlement cuts with Sen.Schumer actually agreeing that Corker's proposal was good for America.

Corker; So, and a lot of people are putting forth a theory and I actually think it has merit where you go ahead and give the president the 2 percent increase that he is talking about, the rate increase on the top 2 percent. And all of a sudden, the shift goes back to entitlements, and all of a sudden, once you give him the right on the top 2 percent, it's actually much lesser tax increase than what he has been talking about, the focus then shifts to entitlements and maybe it puts us in a place where we actually can do something that really saves the nation.

SCHUMER: Well, bottom line is, if Speaker Boehner ends up where Senator Corker has just said he is, we will get a large agreement. And -- but, Speaker Boehner has not said that. And so, we Democrats realize that there have to be two sides to this bargain.

Corker: The shift in focus and entitlements is where we need to go and, again, it is a shame that we're not just sitting down and solving this. But Republicans know that they have the debt ceiling that's coming up right around the corner, and, the leverage is going to shift, as soon as we get beyond this issue.

Wow. And finally ABC's THIS WEEK with George Stephanopoulos. And the guest stars were Senators Tom Coburn and Debbie Stabenow along with Congressman (D) Raul Grijalva and (R) Jeb Hensarling. How did they do with cuts to defense spending? Nada, nothing, zilch. Only three mentions of the word defense. Once when George set up what would happen if the sequester kicks in and twice more while talking about DOMA.

Coburn was in rare form by saying we don't really need Medicare or Social Security, anyway.

"The fact is we are spending money we don't have on things we don't absolutely need," he concluded. "And there's no grownups in Washington that will say, 'Time out, stop the politics, let's have a compromise rather than play the game through the press and hurt the country.' We're already going to get another debt downgrade just from what's happening now because nobody in positions of power are willing to do what's important and necessary for our country."

Why do people even vote for these Republicans who want to take so much away from them for a crisis caused by crimes the people who will suffer most didn't commit?

Oh, I'm sorry. Is that headline a little strong? Maybe because I am just furious over this, as everyone should be. Compare and contrast, kids:

The Senate on Tuesday passed a massive, wide-ranging $631 billion defense authorization bill that restores threatened Pentagon biofuels programs, issues new sanctions against Iran and changes U.S. detention policy for American citizens.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the Senate unanimously 98-0 after the bill was debated for five days and hundreds of amendments were considered on the floor.

That's not even counting the so-called "black budget," of course. Have you ever seen a politician draw the line on the defense budget? I can't remember it ever happening.

Now consider this:

WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to ask Congress for about $50 billion in emergency funds to help rebuild the states that were ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, challenging deficit-minded lawmakers while worrying regional leaders, who complained Wednesday that it was not enough.

The White House will send the proposal to Capitol Hill this week, and while the final sum is still in flux, it should be between $45 billion and $55 billion, according to officials briefed on deliberations over it.

That falls significantly short of the $82 billion sought by New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to clean up storm damage, as well as to improve infrastructure to prepare for future storms.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers from the region quickly expressed disappointment in the pending request and lobbied the administration to increase it before sending it to Congress. “While $50 billion is a significant amount of money, it unfortunately does not meet all of New York and New Jersey’s substantial needs,” Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York and Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, all Democrats, said in a joint statement.

Fifty billion dollars? An insult. We lost $18 billion in disappearing pallets of cash in Iraq, and no one ever gave a crap except dirty hippies like bloggers. Now this is what the administration offers to rebuild the freakin' East Coast?

Shame on Obama, and shame on all the politicians and media clowns cooperating in playing this deficit game. The richest country in the world can't clean up after itself because austerity! (Mind you, New York City is the economic engine of the country, home to Wall Street and the entertainment industry.) Why, if we adequately funded the recovery, that might clue ordinary people in to the economic shell game that's going on before their eyes, aided and abetted by a complicit media.

And we can't have that. [Via David Dayen.]

On Monday, President Obama commemorated Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, declaring “Today we come together as Americans to pray, to reflect and to remember these heroes.” But across the country in San Diego, his GOP rival Mitt Romney joined John McCain at a gathering of veterans to instead deliver a not-so-thinly-veiled attack on the President. But if his message that the U.S. must not “shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs” sounds familiar, it should. After all, back in 2000 George W. Bush deployed the same “hollow military” myth to win the battle for the White House.

On Monday morning, PBS Newshour announced, “Presidential Campaigns Pause to Honor Veterans on Memorial Day.” Unfortunately, that story was published before Mitt Romney addressed the audience at the Memorial Day Center Museum in San Diego. As ABC reported, Romney did not pause for a cease-fire (around the 11:00 mark in the video above):

“We have two courses we can follow,” said Romney. “One is to follow the pathway of Europe. To shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs. And they of course rely on the strength of America and they hope for the best. Were we to follow that kind of course, there would be no one that could stand to protect us.”

“The other is to commit to preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world,” he said. “We choose that course. We choose that course for America not just so that we can win wars, but so we can prevent wars. Because a strong America is the best deterrent to war that ever has been invented.”

As the chart below the fold shows, core U.S. defense spending (that is, outside of Iraq and Afghanistan war funding in red) has risen during every year of the Obama administration. Nevertheless, Mitt Romney announced last fall, "I will reverse President Obama's massive defense cuts." Then during last week's NATO summit in Chicago, Romney penned an op-ed to charge:

"The United States [is] on a path to a hollow military."

If that sound bite rings a bell, it should. That's because the same slander was a centerpiece of Texas Governor George W. Bush's successful campaign 12 years ago.

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Because there is so little discretionary funding in the federal budget, relatively thinking, the Repugs are running around like chickens with their heads off to cut everything else to prevent triggering the military cuts to which they agreed. Why do I have the feeling that this will not end well?

WASHINGTON -- The latest Republican plan to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession.

Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation's debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget.

They are doing so because the Super Committee, which was supposed to find $1.2 trillion in cuts on which everyone could agree, failed, leaving the slashing up to a pre-agreed sequestration plan that extracts half the savings from the military.

Unless Congress acts, the sequestration begins at the start of 2013. Democrats in the Senate are arguing that the Budget Control Act counts as a budget, and therefore they won't take up debate on a spending plan for 2013, much less address Rep. Paul Ryan's House budget resolution.

So instead, the House has embarked on a seldom-used reconciliation process. Its aim is to have at hand an alternative to the sequestration on the theory that the Senate will not want to allow the defense cuts either, and won't have its own plan.

In a memo sent to members Wednesday instructing them how to write their reconciliation bill, Republicans picked a number of targets, including extracting $80 billion from federal workers and $44 billion from health care. In all, it identifies $78 billion to cut in 2013, and details around $300 billion over 10 years.

And billions from food stamps? What a great idea. I love Republicans - and the Democratic enablers who will surely rush to protect the defense industry.

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In the election of 1928, the Republican Party of Herbert Hoover promised voters "a chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard." (We all know how that turned out.) Now, Mitt Romney is pledging that "If I'm President" every college graduate will be guaranteed a job, Iran will have no nuclear weapons and the United States will dominate the 21st century. And when Romney isn't making fantastic promises about what he'll do when he gets to the White House, he's slandering the current occupant, Barack Obama.

"I Won't Let Iran Get Nukes"

Governor Romney's guarantees start with Iran and its nuclear program. In a November 10, 2011 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Romney pledged, "I won't let Iran get nukes." Or as he put it 10 days earlier during a GOP national security debate:

"If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. If you elect me as president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."

As to how he'll ensure that outcome, Romney explained that "If you want peace, prepare for war." And despite occasionally acknowledging the complexity of a strike against Iran and even the questionable possibility of success, Romney told the Wall Street Journal this weekend how he would get it done:

So what would he do about it? "I do not have a top secret security clearance at this stage to be able to define precisely what kinds of actions we could take." But he adds that "the range includes something of a blockade nature, to something of a surgical strike nature, to something of a decapitate the regime nature, to eliminate the military threat of Iran altogether."

No U.S. Decline in Romney's "American Century"

Romney's promise to "eliminate the military threat of Iran altogether" is just part of his larger assurance that the 21st century will be another "American Century." Pretending that the rise of India, China and Brazil doesn't inevitably entail the relative loss of U.S. power and influence, Romney announced in his October address at The Citadel:

"This century must be an American Century. In an American Century, America has the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. In an American Century, America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world...As President of the United States, I will devote myself to an American Century. And I will never, ever apologize for America."

Not content to rest there, Romney accused President Obama of "waving the white flag of surrender":

"An eloquently justified surrender of world leadership is still surrender.

I will not surrender America's role in the world. This is very simple: If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your President.

You have that President today."

Two months later, Mitt Romney repackaged his promise and his slander at the December 15 Republican debate in Sioux City, Iowa:

"Our president thinks America is in decline. It is if he's president. It's not if I'm president. This is going to be an American century."

As for Romney's charge that President Obama "went around the world and apologized for America," the Washington Post Fact Checker deemed it a Four-Pinocchio lie.

A Job for Every College Graduate

At an event in New Hampshire last week, Governor Romney's pandering went from the sublime to the ridiculous. There, Mitt pledged President Romney would deliver full-employment for all American college graduates:

"What I can promise you is this -- when you get out of college, if I'm president you'll have a job. If President Obama is reelected, you will not be able to get a job. That's the reason I will hopefully get young people who are in college is to say, You know what, I understand what it takes to get jobs in America."

As the record shows, not so much. After all, as the Los Angeles Times recently documented, Romney's "Bain Capital often maximized profits in part by firing workers." That's why FactCheck.org, the Washington Post Fact Checker and Fortune all refused to vouch for Romney's claim that "In those hundreds of businesses we invested in, tens of thousands of jobs net-net were created."

Obama "Has Not Created Any New Jobs"

If Mitt Romney can't prove his boasts about his own job creation record, neither can he justify his blatant lie about President Obama's:

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It's crazy, isn't it? It happens like clockwork the minute a Democrat's in the White House. Mike Lux on the Democratic deficit talk that's all the rage these days (as pointed out by Atrios the other day). Which once again raises the question: What, exactly, do Democrats stand for?

So just to summarize here: the deficit is caused by tax cuts for the rich, an economic collapse caused by wealthy bankers which resulted in bailouts for those wealthy bankers plus massive pain for middle income and poor people, tax loopholes and corporate subsidies designed to help the wealthy, plus two wars and wasteful defense spending (much of which goes into the pockets of wealthy defense contractors). And the solution for the deficit hawks: target middle class and lower seniors for social security cuts, and put in a regressive tax that is a burden to low and middle income people.

Justice: American style.

Elites are selling this as a grand compromise: Conservatives get Social Security cuts, and liberals get a tax increase. Oh, boy. My question is: what do regular folks get out of the deal besides screwed?

Progressives ought to be screaming bloody murder at this phony compromise, but we also ought to have a constructive alternative on how we end the budget deficit. There are plenty of budget cuts we can live with: ending wasteful defense spending, take away subsidies to the big corporate farms, put a strong public option in health care reform, have the federal government negotiate drug prices, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are plenty of taxes we can raise that wouldn't soak the people who have been most hurt by the economy of the last decade, including a financial transactions tax on the big banking speculators, an end to the corporate tax loopholes and offshore tax avoidance, bringing taxes on the wealthy back to the level they were before the Reagan tax cuts.

If you did all that, even waiting another year or two to let the economy get on a firmer footing, you could easily balance the budget before the 2010 decade is out and have plenty of money left over to invest in the infrastructure and schools that we so desperately need.

If you want to solve the deficit, target the folks whose time at the money trough caused it in the first place: the big banks, the defense contractors, the drug and insurance companies, the agribusiness giants, and the super wealthy that got all of those huge tax cuts in the first place.

Deficits only seem to matter to anyone only when George Bush isn't president.

Ben Bernanke

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Wednesday that Americans may have to accept higher taxes or changes in cherished entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security if the nation is to avoid staggering budget deficits that threaten to choke off economic growth.

"These choices are difficult, and it always seems easier to put them off -- until the day they cannot be put off anymore," Bernanke said in a speech. "But unless we as a nation demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility, in the longer run we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth."

His stern lecture came as the economy is emerging from the worst recession in years, sending the stock market up considerably over the past year and raising public hopes for a return to prosperity. But the economic downturn -- with tumbling tax revenue, aggressive stimulus spending and rising safety-net payments such as unemployment insurance -- has driven already large budget deficits to their highest level relative to the economy since the end of World War II. This has fueled public concern over how long the United States can sustain its fiscal policies.

The health-care bill signed by President Obama last month has further stoked the national debate over government entitlement programs, though the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the legislation would actually reduce future deficits.

As Ezra writes, people seem to want the deficit reduced, but don't want to actually cut anything. It's not old news, but it makes for good TV and GOP talking points.

Kevin Drum adds:

Ah, the American public. God love 'em. The Economist asked if they'd rather tackle the federal deficit by cutting spending or raising taxes, and the runaway winner was cutting spending, by a margin of 62% to 5%. So what are we willing to cut? Answer: pretty much nothing.

As you can see, there wasn't one single area that even a third of the country wanted to cut back on. Except — hold on there! Down in the middle of the table. There is one area that everyone's willing to trim: foreign aid. Good 'ol foreign aid. A category that, as Roger McShane dryly points out, "makes up less than 1% of America's total spending."

Why do the Villagers ignore Dick Cheney saying that Reagan proved deficits don't matter?

[Treasury Secretary Paul] O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.

O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

The Great Torturer's words on deficit spending doesn't seem to resonate with the media, but when he talks about his love of torture, the Beltway's ears perk up.

If the Tea Party activists and Jim DeMint freaks really want to cut the deficit, then how about cutting defense spending? It's insane the amount of money that is getting shoved down the military pipeline. In 2011, we'll be spending $739 billion.

The money we spend on the two wars would practically pay for health care alone.

I've been seeing a number of op-eds in recent defense journals that have a slightly hysterical, paranoid perspective on the "dangers" of health care reform. The authors of these articles are terrified that mounting costs of health care are going to impinge on the defense budget. Democrat attempts to give all Americans insurance may increase overall health care costs. As a result, a weakened America will be just wide-open to attack by terrorists and China and who knows what else. Think I'm exaggerating? Here's Harvey Sapolsky, a defense academic out of MIT, talking in the National Defense journal.

The defense spending squeeze is on and will become more constricted by health care reform. It is not apples and oranges. About half of the United States’ health care costs appear on the federal government’s budget, which directly affects revenues and expenditures. European nations plead poverty when it comes to funding their militaries in large part because of the squeeze of social spending (including health care). They spend a smaller, though rising, share of their GDPs on health than does the United States, but more of that spending is direct government expenditure.

If heath care can’t be made more efficient and if access to health care can’t be limited, the only alternative is more revenue. Perhaps taxes will be raised. Some will be increased, but not likely enough to cover rising health expenditures. Democrats promise to only tax the rich. But, as the rich know, tax laws have loopholes. Republicans have run for years on a tax-cutting platform. The way to get revenue is to tax the middle class who are many and who are not as fleet of foot as the rich. But both Republicans and Democrats constantly say the middle class is the victim of everything, and surely overtaxed. Running up the deficit is an alternative, but the wars, the stimulus plan and the bailouts have already done that. The cries for controlling spending are already being heard.

The revenue for more health care exists in the form of defense expenditures, which have doubled since 9/11. The billions needed for reforming health will likely come, in one way or another, from cuts in defense spending. Personnel reductions will be hard to make because of the burdens that Iraq and Afghanistan deployments place on U.S. forces. Fewer and fewer aircraft and ships will be bought. There will also be less training and more restrictions on operations with and for allies. America has a powerful military that will take a while to unravel, but unravel it will. The nation’s defense budget is about to tangle with a really dangerous adversary.

Sapolsky's article is actually one of the more sane pieces that I've read. He at least argues for the urgent need for health care reform, least its uncontrolled growth threaten defense spending. He does note that the defense budget has become an attractive target because of its enormous, unchecked growth (you rob banks because that's where the money is). But I think that he (and others) suffer under a number of false assumptions - notably, that health care costs cannot be restrained, the general perception that the defense budget has grown too large, Democrats like health care and hate the military, therefore, the defense budget will suffer cuts to allow the continued growth of health care.

However, the conclusion is limited by its bad assumptions. There is no question that the health care industry can use a healthy dose (no pun intended) of reform, and Medicare/Medicaid will eventually need to be examined in depth as well for reform. Maybe every senior citizen doesn't need a motorized wheelchair (gasp!). Similarly, the need for defense acquisition reform is well documented, despite numerous failed attempts to correct bad practices and to encourage the services to moderate their demands for high-tech, gold-plated defense platforms.

The challenge is that any reforms to either health care or the defense acquisition processes will impact Big Business hard, and it has gotten fat and happy over the past decade. With the recent Supreme Court decision allowing Big Business to buy politicians, it's going to be increasingly hard to reform either health care or defense acquisition. Not that it was easy now - with the Republican party of "NO," continued obstructionism in Congress will ensure that no tough decisions are made - rather, the politicians will favor incremental steps towards reform as long as they are firewalled from blame or implication to any budget cuts.

The cries of doom from the defense journal op-eds are misguided. No one is going to cut defense funds until the pace of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq changes to allow for a drawdown on operational spending. That doesn't involve any changes to the ridiculously out-of-control acquisition process, unfortunately, but that makes it easy for both Democrats and Republicans. Similarly, no one is going to seriously address mounting health care costs as long as there is no change in willingness to add debt to the federal deficit. I used to hope that a new generation of politicians, replacing the grey, old white men in the House and Senate, might cause change, but that's probably too optimistic.

UPDATE: Rob Farley tears down Sapolsky's argument in detail, where I only pointed to the general failure of the "we can't have both health care and defense programs" argument.