Editorial
No need to raid funds for Pentagon

Parents should recognize the syndrome right away. Your teenager comes home with an emergency request for $150.

Ten minutes later it's evident that the question isn't about where the money's coming from, but where it's going. Twenty minutes later your teen admits it wasn't something she really needed, after all.

So it is with the proposition that we raid either the Social Security or the Medicare surplus to give Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld $18.4 billion over and above the Bush administration's original defense budget request.

Before we start asking where we're going to find the money, why don't we look closer at where it's going? For starters, $8.3 billion of the extra money would be earmarked to speed implementation of President Bush's pet project, ballistic missile defense.

Trimming any part of that request, Rumsfeld told the Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee, would throw way off schedule Bush's program to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, alienate the Russians and the Chinese, and terrify the rest of Asia.

Given that it's a missile system that doesn't work and that there's no "rogue" nation capable of testing it yet, what's the rush? Answer: If Rumsfeld doesn't get $8.3 billion this year, how will he get $10 billion or so next year?

What's unfortunate (if not inept) about the way Bush and Rumsfeld have approached defense budgeting this year is that tax-cutting took priority over basic defense spending. Forget bells and whistles; we need to pay better attention to bread-and-butter issues like the rusting of our military.

That brings us back to where the money would come from for this $18.4 billion defense amendment. Our own Sen. Dan Inouye says it's OK with him if some of the money comes from the Social Security or Medicare surpluses. It's true that there are technical arguments why this is possible. Indeed, we used to do it routinely.

It's also true that Bush and numerous members of Congress have promised not to raid these surpluses. It's abundantly clear that the extra money isn't available from a balanced budget, and that Congress doesn't have the stomach to get the money by cutting other programs.

This is an appropriate time for Inouye and his colleagues to put their collective foot down and demand rational defense budgeting from the administration. They should listen to the Pentagon, which wants to close excess bases and terminate unneeded programs to raise the money for basic replacement and maintenance of our run-down military.

Then they should take a deep breath and put missile defense on a slow track while they contemplate whether that idea is rational or even sane.