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| united states currency eye- IMG_7364_web (Photo credit: kevindean) |
But it may as well as be. A chorus of former military leaders, current administration officials and fiscal hawks have all labeled the country's debt a threat to national security. "A nation with our current levels of unsustainable debt ... cannot hope to sustain for very long its superiority from a military perspective, or its influence in world affairs," Admiral Michael Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month.
The concern: If the debt continues to grow unbridled, the U.S. government will be constrained in its ability to pay for what it wants to do militarily and diplomatically. And it could limit the country's leverage with foreign powers.
Especially since other countries own close to half of all outstanding U.S. public debt, with China and Japan leading the list of creditors. "You can't be strong around the world unless you're strong at home," saidLawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who served as assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan. Even if the bond market doesn't jack up U.S. interest rates wildly, interest costs on the country's accumulated debt could top $900 billion by 2022. That's the equivalent of one-fourth of today's federal budget -- and about $200 billion more than the United States is currently spending on defense annually.
By 2035, interest costs could consume close to 10% of the economy unless lawmakers make policy changes, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. While national security spending is not the primary cause of the country's debt problem, it accounts for about a fifth of federal spending. And many defense and budget experts think the defense budget is filled with inefficiencies and waste that can be curbed without compromising national security if done smartly. (No one, for the record, thinks the $500 billion of across-the-board defense cuts scheduled to start next year are smart.). What's more, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been run on borrowed money -- more than $1 trillion so far. And the decision to run up that tab was made before the country was hit by the 2008 financial crisis, which added considerably to federal deficits. ... Continue to read.
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