Defense spending borrows a page from FDR's CWA leave raking jobs

Congress orders the Navy to shower billions on obsolete, malfunctioning Freedom-class littoral ships to avoid job losses in key districts

A front page New York Times story today (“Lobbing Helped Save 5 Flawed Warships) exemplifies how opulent congressional spending on defense is indistinguishable from federal jobs raking leaves created by the Civil Works Administration of President Franklin Roosevelt purportedly to diminish unemployment. (In fact, the money would have created more jobs if returned to the private sector via tax cuts).

Ordinarily, Congress bows to the executive branch on matters ostensibly related to national security : initiating war, collecting foreign intelligence, state secrets, classification of documents, and revocation of treaties. Congress bows even when the Constitution prohibits its abdication of responsibility.

But Congress routinely asserts its power of the purse to compel defense spending on weapons tantamount to former Congressman Don Young’s $400 million “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska (which fortunately was never constructed).

Last year, the Navy announced that eight of the ten Freedom-class littoral combat ships now based in Jacksonville, Florida and San Diego, California, would be retired. The reasons were military relevance. The ships chronically malfunctioned. Their anti-submarine features intended to counter China’s surging naval capacity had become obsolete. Admiral Michael M. Gilday, chief of naval operations, reported to the U.S. Senate: ‘We refused to put an additional dollar against that system that wouldn’t match the Chinese undersea threat.”

The Navy estimated a savings of $4.3 billion over the next five years from retiring the littorals, money the Admiral wished to devote to missiles and other firepower relevant to potential wars.

But mirabile dictu, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, signed by President Joe Biden last December, prohibited the Navy from retiring four of the eight littorals in Jacksonville and the one in San Diego. The time-honored playbook of defense contractors was taken off the shelf.

A coalition of business leaders from Jacksonville sounded a jobs alarm: the decommissioning would directly slash 2,000 jobs in the city.

A broad consortium of contractors with economic ties to the ships, captained by a trade association with members sporting $3 billion in maintenance and repair contracts, descended on key members representing communities with large Navy stations. The sound track was familiar. Vote to stop the decommissioning to save jobs. Sotto voce: your support will be rewarded by handsome campaign contributions.

None of this should be surprising. In December 2011, Congressman Buck McKeon (R-CA), then chair of the House Armed Services Committee, fiercely opposed cuts in defense spending to protect 100,000 military jobs, 200,000 civilian defense jobs, and 500,000 defense contracting jobs. The Aerospace Industries Association , supported by chairman McKeon and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, warned Congress that projected cuts in defense spending of $1 trillion spread over a decade could cost 1 million jobs. A seasoned congressman told me that when the Pentagon briefs members on weapons systems, they all fixate on how many jobs will be maintained or created in their districts. Nothing is asked about whether the weapons are worth the price.

The larger lesson to be deduced from chronic defense spending fiascos is that the status quo always begins with a running start. Individuals, organizations, or corporations that benefit from the status quo will fight to remain beneficiaries with much greater energy and money than will supporters of change whose specific beneficiaries are commonly unknown and have much less at stake. A person who has a job will fight to keep it with greater perseverance than will a prospective replacement whose life has not previously pivoted on the hoped-for employment.

Thus, in advocating for change, first identify the prime status quo beneficiaries and seek to minimize their dislocations if the change succeeds. Their opposition will diminish accordingly.