Defense’s Death Spiral: The Increasing Irrelevance of More Spending

The most striking feature of this year's defense budget debate was that there was none. One reason for the absence of the usual acrimony accompanying the authorization of billions of federal dollars was congressional exhaustion from the impeachment proceedings. Another and more important reason was that the military's problems -- the "three Rs" of readiness, recruiting, and retention -- were well reported. President Clinton could not afford to be caught cutting defense dollars while bombing Iraq and Kosovo. The administration's unease with traditional defense-cutting arguments has spread across both aisles on Capitol Hill, where almost any vote on three-R spending