In the Washington Times, national security analysts William Hartung of the New America Foundation and Christopher Preble of the Cato Institute argue against increasing defense spending in the stimulus package:
Decisions on how many Humvees to buy, or how many bases to refurbish, should rest on military necessity, not economic expedience subject to political chicanery. When military procurement becomes nothing more than a series of thinly veiled pork-barrel projects, it risks exposing our troops to unnecessary risks, and ultimately undermines our security.
But Hartung and Preble don't exactly explain how having more Humvees, more soldiers, or more fighters would "expose troops to unnecessary risks" or "undermine our security." The case for a defense stimulus rests not only on the argument that there are plenty of 'shovel ready' defense projects to fund, but also that there are military investments we need. Preble and Hartung do not see this convergence of economic and military interests. They give the impression that hiring people to build the Virginia-class submarine, the V-22 Osprey, and the F-22 is the equivalent of hiring people to dig holes and then fill them in. Capping the F-22 program is sensible, they write, because "our most dangerous adversaries are al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban insurgents that don't possess even a single aircraft." But, as Stuart Koehl wrote last month, it would be myopic to cede U.S. air and sea superiority to China. Furthermore, Koehl pointed out that the V-22 Osprey is "one of the few new high-tech systems that really supports low intensity operations (by virtue of its ability to insert troops very rapidly at long distances from base)." The current debate in Congress is not whether there will be a jobs program, but about what kind of jobs program we will have. Is it an NEA jobs program for artists? Or is it a DOD jobs program for heroes?