Government defense expenditures surged by 13 percent between July and August.
The Pentagon spent significantly more on weapons, training, operations, and maintenance. (Ammunition purchases, for instance, doubled.) Had these expenditures not occurred last quarter, the U.S. economy would have grown at a mere 1.36 percent, instead of 2.0 percent.
What caused the jump? Ezra Klein discusses:
So what happened? Here’s one explanation: “In the Pentagon, you have to use it or lose it by the end of the fiscal year in September,” says Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense now at the Center for American Progress. “You see this a lot. ‘We’ve got to fly a lot this month for training, otherwise Congress will take back the money they gave us.’ “In other words, typical bureaucratic maneuvers to maintain control and spend every last penny possible.
Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, concurs that defense expenditures often rise just before the end of the fiscal year in September. Every year, Congress provides the Pentagon with a certain amount of budget authority. If the military doesn’t spend the full amount, there’s the risk that lawmakers could come back the following year and reduce the defense budget. “The Pentagon wants to show that the money’s well spent,” says O’Hanlon. “But they can also fall out of favor with Congress if they spend too little.”
But then why was the surge in military so unusually large this past quarter, compared with previous Septembers? Two reasons. First, the Pentagon is facing the prospect of sharp budget cuts at the end of the year as part of the looming sequester. There’s been some talk that the military could even lose money that’s already been budgeted but hasn’t been spent yet — so the Pentagon has additional incentive to spend funds now that have been budgeted over multiple years.
The other factor, Korb and O’Hanlon note, is that Congress was late in setting the defense budget for fiscal year 2012: The budget was finally patched together through continuing resolutions in the winter. So, for a significant period, the Pentagon was unsure exactly how much it could actually spend. That could help explain why defense expenditures and investments were relatively anemic earlier this year and then skyrocketed right before the fiscal year ended in September.
“It looks like what we’re seeing is a confluence of budget and political factors,” says O’Hanlon. This past quarter was, in essence, an excellent time for the military to sign a bunch of contracts and spend its funds. And that’s exactly what happened.
Weaponized Keynesianism.... is there any other kind?
ReplyDeleteKeep using that phrase, Bob. I hope it catches on to describe Keynesianism generally.
Isn't this an example of "military keynesianism" at work?
ReplyDeleteKeynesianism is very destructive to environment. Enormous waste of resources and long-term destructions of the landscape. All this destruction to fill an imaginary aggregate output gap in their excel-sheets.
ReplyDeleteMoney-printing and fiscal stimulus also widens the gap between the rich and poor, since it is the connected elite that receives the new money and/or new gov't contracts first.
So explain to me: Why are the environmentalists, keynesianists and income-equality do-gooder's always the one and same people? Do they lack an ability to think beyond one level? Or are they simply mad?
I think they are simply evil, and while they're intentions might not necessarily be wholesale evil, their wickedness colors all their perceptive and cognitive processes.
DeleteOr something like that.
It is not just the individuals employed by defense department who strive to expend their entire budget by the end of the fiscal period, all State agencies do it. "Use it or lose it" is a pervasive mentality throughout government bureaucracies.
ReplyDelete