The future trajectory of military spending may hinge on a battle within the Republican Party as longtime “defense hawks,” who support big Pentagon budgets, are at odds with tea party-inspired conservatives, who denounce taxes and federal spending across the board, GOP officials and political experts say.
The tension among Republicans has been mounting for several years as the tea party movement has gained influence, and now the battle is coming to a head as the threat of massive automatic cuts to the defense budget loom under the mechanism known as sequestration/.../
The political landscape has shifted since the 2010 midterm elections gave Republicans control of the House and swept into power many freshmen with tea party support and campaign promises to shrink the deficit. Since then, overall military spending has contracted as troops left Iraq and the Pentagon’s base budget flattened out.
“The high point in defense spending was in 2010 — when you had Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “It’s not what people think … when it comes to defense spending and who is doing the cutting.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill have essentially signaled a willingness to scrap the far-reaching budget cuts that would take effect under sequestration in exchange for a tax hike on upper-level incomes and an implicit agreement to continue running large deficits.
But among Republicans, the tea party’s fierce opposition to taxes and government spending is forcing their party to make hard choices.