The debate over the Bush tax cuts is over. The tax cuts won.

Today's New York Times:

It is a maxim in Congress these days: If high-profile legislation affecting millions of Americans is about to expire, deal with it at the last possible second, preferably with rancor. 

But a major exception is in the offing with the Bush-era tax cuts, which are set to lapse on Jan 1. Both parties in the House and the Senate are eager, perhaps even giddy, at the prospect of voting for their respective versions of an extension of the cuts this summer, well before the due date.

Now, the piece goes on to say that the Democratic package would drop the cuts for high earners and keep them for the middle class. But with a divided Congress and this president in charge, does anybody expect the Democratic preference will become law? Anybody?

(Crickets.)

Right. We've already seen this movie before. So maybe it's time to end the debate, make the tax rates permanent rather than dickering with them every two years, and start planning for a budget within those revenue limits. Politicians of every stripe and party should be clear with the public: You're going to keep your current tax rates, but you're not going to keep your current services. Something has to give.

The debate over the revenue side is over, and Democrats have lost. The sooner they and their allies admit it, the sooner they can prepare to shape the government that results from the revenue limitations. And the sooner they can decide what, exactly, they can live without.

Even Paul Krugman thinks Max Boot sounds like Paul Krugman

I've poked fun at conservative defense writer Max Boot lately because of Boot's recent assertions that cutting defense spending would end up cutting American jobs in a soft economy. I noted that Boot sounded like liberal columnist Paul Krugman, and suggested that "mainstream conservative Republicans—whatever their fiscal rhetoric—have long favored the soft socialism of big defense spending."

Krugman sounds the same theme this morning, not mentioning Boot specifically, but otherwise making the same point. He calls this crowd "weaponized Keynesians," a term borrowed from Barney Frank.

First things first: Military spending does create jobs when the economy is depressed. Indeed, much of the evidence that Keynesian economics works comes from tracking the effects of past military buildups. Some liberals dislike this conclusion, but economics isn’t a morality play: spending on things you don’t like is still spending, and more spending would create more jobs.

Beyond that, there’s a point made long ago by the Polish economist Michael Kalecki: to admit that the government can create jobs is to reduce the perceived importance of business confidence.

Appeals to confidence have always been a key debating point for opponents of taxes and regulation; Wall Street’s whining about President Obama is part of a long tradition in which wealthy businessmen and their flacks argue that any hint of populism on the part of politicians will upset people like them, and that this is bad for the economy. Once you concede that the government can act directly to create jobs, however, that whining loses much of its persuasive power — so Keynesian economics must be rejected, except in those cases where it’s being used to defend lucrative contracts.

Right. I don't mind that Boot and his fellow hawks are making an economic argument for defense spending. I just wish they'd apply that same logic to the rest of government.

Does terrorism justify exempting the Defense Department from budget cuts?

That's what Bentley Rayburn suggests at National Review today:

Congress should remember that we are still facing very real threats. Today, we are fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and fighting al-Qaeda across the globe using intelligence and special-operations forces backed up with Predator drones and other modern technologies. We’re also protecting the nascent democratic movements in Libya and elsewhere, expanding operations to hot spots like Yemen, and rotating home a fighting force worn down by a decade of repeated, extended combat deployments.

Terror attacks are on the rise as the threat spreads around the globe — according to the National Counterterrorism Center, there were 2,534 terror attacks worldwide in 2010, nearly triple the 945 recorded five years ago.

I found that last paragraph interesting, so I went to the National Counterterrorism Center website. I couldn't verify Rayburn's numbers, but I did find a couple of other very interesting charts in the NTC's report on 2010 activity.

Like this one:

And this one:

So: Barely any non-military Americans were killed in terrorist incidents around the world in 2010—and 13 of the 15 who did die, died in Afghanistan. (One in Iraq, one in Uganda.) No private-citizen Americans were kidnapped.

Which is to say: It sure doesn't look like Americans are the targets of all this rising terroristic activity.

That's not to say that the United States doesn't have a legitimate concern with this trend. And these numbers don't include uniformed U.S. personnel who died in terror attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the charts above raise the question of whether rising terroristic activity "worldwide" is an actual threat to American security. That's the metric that should determine defense spending priorities: A civil war in the Congo—tragic as that is—doesn't necessarily count.

But the arguments by Rayburn and Max Boot and other hawks rest on the presumption that the United States military should remain a globe-spanning colossus. That's an issue that should be on the table. Our interests—and our security—doesn't stop at our borders. But neither are they infinite. Certainly our resources aren't. Nor should the defense budget be.

Max Boot still sounds like Paul Krugman

I noted recently that conservative hawk Max Boot was starting to sound like Paul Krugman. Today, he again makes the economic case for leaving the military budget untouched:

If the Pentagon is forced to slash a trillion dollars during the next decade—which would amount to an 18 percent reduction from the Obama budget projections released earlier this year—the Committee staff projects the total size of the Army and Marine Corps could fall from 771,400 personnel today to just 571,000, a 25 percent reduction that would make it impossible to respond to a range of different contingencies around the world. Some 200,000 soldiers and Marines who signed up to serve their country will be fired—and many of them will be hard put to find work at a time when the national unemployment rate is over 9 percent and the unemployment rate for young Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is believed to be over 20 percent. (For wounded veterans the rate is said to be over 40 percent.) We would not only be breaking faith with these heroes but also jeopardizing our security—and that of our allies—in the process.

Again, that's the Krugman argument against recession austerity—that reduced budgets kicks thousands and thousands of public employees off the payroll into an unwelcoming job market. Soldiers, sailors, and marines are to be exempt from this process because they provide us security. Police and firefighters, apparently, don't.

But wait. There's also our security. What valuable security interests do we have that require 771,400 soldiers and Marines that 571,000 won't? Boot doesn't answer that question—there's always danger out there, nebulous though it may be. Instead, he relies ever-more-heavily on the economics argument, even noting that cutting a number of weapons programs will result in private-sector layoffs:

Cutting all these programs will result in even more job losses—the report projects at least 25 percent of the civilian defense workforce will have to be furloughed, resulting in the elimination of 200,000 jobs.

Again: The argument applies just as well to non-defense sectors of government spending.

Do we owe our veterans something more than unfettered capitalism? Maybe. Do we need to have a rough-and-ready defense force ready to protect our country? Sure. But the government is tightening its belt. We have to live within our means—and maybe that means giving up the ability to invade countries on the other side of the planet.  But if the primary argument against defense cuts is that it will harm the economy, and the unemployment rate, then that argument applies to the rest of government as well. Our military is special—but it's not that special.

Why civilian agencies can't help counterinsurgency succeed in Iraq

This isn't probably all that widely known, but a key aspect of the counterinsurgency doctrine Gen. David Petraeus helped develop back in his Fort Leavenworth days -- before he became a celebrity superhero in Iraq, and now Afghanistan -- is this little point: The military can't do it alone.  The American government's civilian agencies -- ranging from Treasury to (seriously) the Department of Agriculture -- all have a vital role to play in helping win over a secure the population where the insurgency is taking place.

This doesn't happen as well as it should -- at least, that's what military types say with a fair amount of frequency. But part of the reason that may be the case is this: where political types back home in Washington are frequently willing to write blank -- or, at least, very big -- checks to fund military efforts abroad, they're stingier when it comes to those civilian agencies. Here's a story in today's Washington Post:

Beginning in September, the State Department will take over all police training in Iraq from coalition military forces, and it has proposed replacing its current 16 provincial reconstruction teams spread across the country with five consular offices outside Baghdad.

But since planning for the transition began more than two years ago, costs have skyrocketed and the money to pay for them has become increasingly tight. Congress cut the State Department's Iraq request in the 2010 supplemental appropriation that President Obama signed late last month; the Senate Appropriations Committee and a House subcommittee have already slashed the administration's $1.8 billion request for fiscal 2011 operations in Iraq.

The State Department has signaled in recent weeks that it will need up to $400 million more than initially requested to cover mushrooming security costs, but lawmakers seem in no mood to acquiesce.

"They need a dose of fiscal reality," a senior Senate aide said, speaking on the condition of anonymity amid ongoing negotiations over the State Department funding.

I'm all for fiscal reality -- and I'm a fan of efforts to impose that reality upon America's efforts abroad. Still: Does anyone think that Congress would be so stingy if Petraeus was asking for this exact money, for the exact same reasons, and in the exact same "oops we miscalculated" context? It's extremely doubtful.

The defense establishment has long been extremely talented at attracting funding and resisting even modest cuts to the growth of its budgets. But there's a double-edged sword to that success: The military on its own cannot -- and should not -- bear the only burden of achieving America's aims abroad. But it may be the only institution that's given the fiscal latitude to do so.

Marc Thiessen lies about defense spending "cuts"

This is a theme that gets repeated a lot, but I'll pick on Marc Thiessen for repeating it. Here he is at The Corner today:

The New York Times has a front-page story today on the growing momentum on Capitol Hill to cut defense spending. It is not surprising that in an age when the Democrats are showering money on almost every domestic initiative known to man, the one area they would seek spending cuts is the defense budget.

But Thiessen is lying. Let's look at the New York Times story for an explaination:

Mr. Gates is calling for the Pentagon’s budget to keep growing in the long run at 1 percent a year after inflation, plus the costs of the war. It has averaged an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 7 percent a year over the last decade (nearly 12 percent a year without adjusting for inflation), including the costs of the wars. So far, Mr. Obama has asked Congress for an increase in total spending next year of 2.2 percent, to $708 billion — 6.1 percent higher than the peak under the Bush administration.

Get that: The Pentagon budget isn't going down. It's just not going to go up much, much faster than the rate of inflation. Instead, if the president and Robert Gates have their way, the budget will grow only slightly faster than the rate of inflation. That's still growth. And given that the United States is still spending as much as the rest of the world, combined, on its military -- well, that hardly represents a shirking of the "common defense" that Thiessen makes it out to be.

Eric Cantor's piddly YouCut site proves Republicans aren't serious about cutting the deficit

Via Twitter, Peter Suderman points out that Republicans plan on campaigning this fall against the federal deficit, but have no plans to actually do anything about it if they take Congress. See Sunday's "Meet The Press" for confirmation. In response to such complaints, National Review's Robert Costa points to Eric Cantor's YouCut website, which he describes:

Cantor debuted YouCut [in May]. Its premise is simple: Each week, Americans can vote for their favorite of five potential spending cuts on the web (or via text message to 68398). Cantor works to bring the winner to the House floor. With one click, you can help to shape the House GOP agenda.

“It allows us to focus on out-of-control federal spending, the number-one issue for millions of Americans,” Cantor says. “For us, it is an unprecedented online project.”

Unprecedented? Whatever. It's also incredibly piddly and lame. Look at the current options YouCut offers for a vote.

* Eliminating unnecessary Congressional spending: Potential savings of $35 million over 10 years.

* Eliminate the "Dodd Earmark" from "ObamaCare:" Savings of $100 million over 10 years.

* Prohibiting first class subsidies on Amtrak: Potential savings of $1.2 billion over 10 years.

* Reform the Energy Star program: $655 million over 10 years.

* Prevent energy assistance payments to dead people: "Hundreds of millions of dollars" over 10 years.

Notice a common attribute? All these options are piddly rounding errors in the gargantuan federal budget, eliminating -- at most -- $120 million a year out of a $3.55 trillion budget! It's simply not a serious attempt to address budget fears; it looks a lot more like feeble, ineffective pandering. Real austerity is going to force people to give up stuff they want or like getting from government. And not just the poor, "unproductive" people. Hard, politically unpopular choices will have to be made. Republicans have never shown the ability to make those choices. Eric Cantor's "unprecedented" web site proves the point.

For all you Obama-hating deficit hawks out there

Via Paul Krugman, a graphical representation of how the two Bush tax cuts, the Iraq War and the new health reform law impact the federal budget:

Stuff like this is why it's so hard for me not to think of the Tea Partiers as, essentially, sore losers.