Glenn Greenwald took a chunk out of Evan Bayh’s hide, characterizing him as “the face of rotted Washington.” The specific trigger for this column was Bayh’s pretense of being a “deficit hawk” while supporting foreign military adventures but opposing taxes to pay for them.

Escalation of force in Afghanistan to the tune of 30,000 soldiers will cost an additional $30 billion per year. But, according to Sen. Bayh, there should be no taxes to pay for this because it’s “national defense.” Instead, Sen. Bayh wants to cut spending “in other parts of the budget.”

Quoth Glenzilla:

Bayh wants to send other people into every proposed war he can find and keep them there forever ever without ever bearing any of the costs himself — not in military service for him or his family nor even in higher taxes to pay for his glorious wars. Sacrifice is for everyone other than Evan Bayh and his friends. He runs around praising himself as a “deficit hawk” while recklessly supporting wars and indefinite occupations that the country can’t afford and which drive us further into debt. He feigns concern over the “deficit” only when it comes time to deny ordinary Americans benefits which he and his family already possess in abundance.

He then bashes Sen. Bayh about a little bit for his nepotism-fueled rise to political ascendancy and his wife’s cozy relationship with the insurance and health care industries.

I share Greenwald’s concern about why, somehow, military spending never seems to count to those who claim to be “fiscal conservatives.” For 2009, we’re spending on the order of $1 trillion on “defense.” (I put “defense” in quotes because some activities, such as the War in Iraq, may advance certain policies, but strike me as having precious little to do with “defending” the United States.) I’m not a knee-jerk peacenik, but I don’t see where we are getting all that much return on our tax dollars in this area. If we’re unsafe in the world, it’s certainly not for lack of spending. Our military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world’s combined. About 24% of our tax revenues can be attributed to defense spending.

The numbers are just so huge, that I don’t find it credible to try to advance one’s self as a “deficit hawk” while turning a blind eye to defense spending. Such lawmakers are apparently willing to send billion after billion in pursuit of some marginal, yet unmeasurable, increase in security before spending even lesser amounts domestically regardless of whether the expenditures will actually do some measurable good.

Update I hadn’t seen this opinion column by Nicholas Kristof published earlier this month.

President Obama and Congress will soon make defining choices about health care and troops for Afghanistan.

These two choices have something in common — each has a bill of around $100 billion per year. So one question is whether we’re better off spending that money blowing up things in Helmand Province or building up things in America.
. . .
Granted, the health care costs will continue indefinitely, while the United States cannot sustain 100,000 troops in Afghanistan for many years. On the other hand, the health care legislation pays for itself, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the deployment in Afghanistan is unfinanced and will raise our budget deficits and undermine our long-term economic security.

So doesn’t it seem odd to hear hawks say that health reform is fiscally irresponsible, while in the next breath they cheer a larger deployment of troops in Afghanistan?

Update 2 It seems Sen. Bayh’s commitment to deficit reduction is not so ardent when the issue is greater tax benefits for charitable giving by the very rich.

Update 3 Great quote from Steven Walt that I thought applied to this post:

Americans have come to believe that spending government revenues on U.S. citizens here at home is usually a bad thing and should be viewed wth suspicion, but spending billions on vast social engineering projects overseas is the hallmark of patriotism and should never be questioned. This position makes no sense, but it is hard to think of a prominent U.S. leader who is making an explicit case for doing somewhat less abroad so that we can afford to build a better future here at home.

John Cole over at Balloon-Juice has been doing some good blogging on the arbitrary line in the sand Southern Senators have been drawing with respect to giving money to the auto industry so it doesn’t collapse. Here is one of the entries.

Some themes: these Senators appear to be going to bat for foreign automakers in their own districts. They appear to be willing to let the American auto industry collapse if they can’t do some union busting. If the U.S. picks up the health care costs of its workers, the difference in compensation between the Big 3 union workers and their non-union Japanese company counterparts becomes almost negligible. The Southern Senators are willing to pay Iraqis not to shoot at us; are willing to pay bankers and their bonuses; but aren’t willing to pay American workers who actually make stuff.

Again, hard telling whether the auto bailout would actually succeed. But, the priorities are telling. When it comes to providing money to American workers who actually build stuff, some of our politicians just can’t stomach the thought.

(H/t Josh Gillespie) I think the proclamation of death for the GOP is premature, but it certainly isn’t inspiring fear the way it used to. (Though, there are plenty of Democrats out there who seem to have a political equivalent of battered spouse syndrome; cringing at the thought that Republicans might do something mean to them and acting timidly as a result.)

In any event, Jim VandeHei and Alexander Burns have an article entitled “Why the GOP fell so far, so fast.” I don’t think it so much tells us why as tells us what. The GOP’s think tanks are weakening, low dollar fund raising has diminished, and embrace of the Internet has been relatively slow.

I don’t know that it’s all that complicated. The Republican leadership got corrupt and the conservative ideals it did implement, by and large, didn’t work very well. The grass roots activists don’t like them very well, and the independents who used to settle a tie in favor of the GOP are now breaking the other way.

I suspect the Democrats will come in, get a couple of things done, then get mired down in the minutiae of governing and getting reelected. Meanwhile, the GOP will reinvent itself to some degree, and the circle will repeat — thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

It’s been all over the Internets today, but President Bush has set a new record for citizen disapproval. With a 69% disapproval rating, he beat Harry Truman’s previous high of 67% during the Korean War. The polls only go back as far as FDR. I don’t think we’ll be seeing a Truman-esque revival of Bush. I think he’ll be hanging out with Harding in the Presidential polls.

I haven’t had the time to read the John Yoo memo or its critiques, but I’m flagging the issue here in the hopes I’ll get back to it. Yoo was a Department of Justice official who was basically promoted because he’d write indefensible legal memoranda that even John Ashcroft and his second and command would not. The memoranda seem to stand for the proposition that the Constitution doesn’t impose much in the way of limits on the President. From what I’ve seen of him in other places, Yoo offends me more than your average Bush toady. He’s a smart guy and a lawyer and, in my opinion, has a higher duty to the Constitution than the average citizen.