The Secret to Absorbing Defense Cuts: Economic Growth

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BRAVO for Congress. Last month's strong vote in the House to approve the military base closing proposal is a sound display of political will and a correct stand against those who would maintain military spending for alleged economic reasons. A strong United States military is necessary for world peace, but retaining unneeded defense capacity as a jobs program is bad economic policy. Those who would do so underestimate the flexibility of the US economy and ignore the economic benefits that will result from investing the resources no longer needed for defense in new productive capital.

As a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development (CED), I recently chaired a study …