Increase military funding, Dole says

Skeptics say plan isn't tied to needs

WASHINGTON -- In the guns-or-butter debate that often consumes Congress during budget season, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole has joined the nation's military leaders in trying to goose defense dollars in coming years.

Dole thinks that the United States isn't spending enough on weaponry and troops, and she wants the national defense budget set to at least 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product -- a jolt that would boost President Bush's own budget pitch by at least $50 billion next year alone.

Dole's work comes as part of a concerted effort by the Pentagon to raise awareness as a nervous military faces a new presidential administration next year.

"We're trying to build a national debate on why it's so important," Dole, a Salisbury Republican, said in an interview Tuesday.

This morning, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, are expected to tout the 4 percent funding level when they appear before Dole and the rest of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

They could be speaking out of school, as Bush's budget of $515 billion for defense spending amounts to just 3.3 percent of this year's projected gross domestic product of $14 trillion.

But military leaders have been agitating for more money for years.

"They're trying to raise awareness," said Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank that proposed the 4 percent funding level several years ago.

Last fall, Mullen gave a speech in Washington and suggested the 4 percent funding level.

And on Monday, Gates told reporters that this year's budget pales next to Korean War spending (14 percent of GDP) and that of the Vietnam War (9 percent of GDP).

And yet Bush's base $515 billion defense budget -- though a $36 billion increase over the current year -- doesn't include emergency war spending. Bush is expected soon to ask for at least $70 billion in such spending.

Dole wants to see a steadier flow of dollars. She has filed a joint Senate resolution with the House of Representatives calling for the 4 percent floor and hopes to see it become part of Congress' budget resolution this spring.

"It's our safety, our security as a nation," she said. "We have to look down the road as to what's needed."

Appealing or arbitrary?

Dole's suggestion has political capital, said Kathleen Hicks, a senior fellow in international security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, for example, proposed the 4 percent spending floor last spring in a foreign policy plan.

But the plan has plenty of skeptics.

"A 4 percent floor is arbitrary," said Jean-Louise Beard, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat and the state's only member of the House Appropriations Committee.

"It's not a very realistic or analytically sound proposal," agreed Steven Kosiak, vice president for budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "There's no link to a strategy or what's happening in the real world."

He doubted any new presidential administration will allocate 4 percent of the budget exclusively to defense.

Making that pledge, he said, would bring the defense budget up to $750 billion in the next few years after adjusting for inflation.

"If the leadership of the Pentagon can't convince the Bush administration to do this, how much credibility does that give them?" Kosiak asked.