It is no surprise that the defense contractors want to protect their profits by getting taxpayers to pony up more money. Now they have secured the support of Crossroads GPS in a commercial against Senate candidate and former Virginia governor Tim Kaine. The Crossroads ad follows similar ones from Kaine’s challenger, George Allen, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. All three ads claim that spending cuts under sequestration will result in devastating job losses to the defense industry and Virginia; the Crossroads ad claims 520,000 jobs will be lost. But these estimates are wildly inflated and represent the short-term interests of the defense industry, not the American taxpayer.
In actuality, the cuts, if they occur, will be evenly divided between the Pentagon and the rest of the discretionary budget. They are a very modest share of total federal spending over the next decade, and the assertion that the cuts will lead to massive job losses have been thoroughly refuted here, here, and here. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that such cuts will have beneficial effects over the medium- to long-term, if the savings are returned to taxpayers, and not merely plowed into other federal spending.
All of these pro-GOP ads get the lost jobs number from a study commissioned by the Aerospace Industries Association and authored by George Mason economist Stephen Fuller. Last Friday, the Cato Institute hosted a forum—which included Fuller—that considered the effects of military spending cuts on employment and the economy. We discussed the positive impact that cuts in Pentagon spending can have in the wider economy, and even in a state like Virginia that is more dependent than other states on federal spending. The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore argued we should just let sequestration happen (I agree). As the Washington Post reported, Economist Benjamin Zycher summed up the hypocrisy of conservatives claiming the defense budget produces jobs:
“Conservatives . . . are highly dubious about the purported [gross domestic product] and employment benefits of federal domestic spending, as illustrated by the meager effects of the Obama stimulus fiasco,” he said. “There’s no particular reason to believe that defense spending is different.”
I wish that organizations like Crossroads GPS were as committed to saving the taxpayers money as they are to electing Republicans. I’d also like it if they relied on objective facts, not statistics designed to protect the narrow interests of an industry that relies overwhelmingly on taxpayer dollars. We wouldn’t expect Republicans to accept the teachers unions’ claims about job losses from cuts in the Department of Education. Why, then, do they promote these phony numbers by the defense contractors?
On Thursday, Dan Mitchell and I will be discussing this issue—the effects of sequestration—on Capitol Hill. It is not too late to register, but space is limited, so act now.
