The threat of government shutdown loomed during the first of the fall 2023 lecture series sponsored by the Lampert Institute for Civic and Global Affairs, as two experts weighed in on how ongoing federal budget issues impact national security interests. The Sept. 19 lecture, “Economic Security IS National Security: How the Deficit and Debt Affect American Power,” featured Michael O’Hanlon, director of Research and Foreign Policy at Brookings Institution and Maya MacGuineas, president of the bi-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
O’Hanlon, who has returned as the Lampert Institute’s 2023–24 non-resident fellow, says current trends in politics may pull the U.S. back to more of an isolationist foreign policy.
“For those of us who grew up during the Cold War and learned about the world wars and saw what happened the last time the United States was isolationist, it’s a scary thought,” O’Hanlon says.
Some have proposed cuts to foreign military aid as an option to cut spending, specifically aid to support the ongoing war in Ukraine, but O’Hanlon contends that foreign aid is not the problem and is a small fraction of the overall federal defense budget. The current level of defense spending takes into account more than protecting the U.S. from short-term threats, but also serves as a deterrent to conflicts by having a military presence on the world stage, he says. Prior to the world wars, O’Hanlon says the U.S. took a “wait and see” approach to what was going on in Europe, but after WWII it shifted to having structures in place — including forward-stationed American military personnel — that would make it clear to foreign adversaries that engaging our allies would also be engaging the U.S. military.
“There’s a lot to worry about, but the overall strategy of engagement and alliance formation has seemed to work pretty well,” O’Hanlon says, while noting that strategy has not prevented all wars, kept the world completely safe, or eliminated all dangers.
MacGuineas agrees the increasing budget deficit has become a huge national security issue and says it is on course to hit record highs in the next few years, having already hit 100% of GDP with the expectation it will increase even more.
“In four to five years we will spend more on interest payments in this country than we will spend on national defense,” she says.
Complicating matters is the growing hostility and political divide in Congress, MacGuineas says, creating a challenging environment to make the decisions necessary to have a fiscal turnaround. MacGuineas supports the creation of a bipartisan fiscal commission to help bring Democrats and Republicans together to examine all areas of the budget and tax code and work to find areas of agreement on some of the “thornier issues,” such as where to cut spending and how to fund Social Security and Medicare, which politicians on both sides of the aisle are reluctant to address directly due to the unpopularity of raising taxes.
“Taxes are going to have to come up significantly,” MacGuineas says. “Let me be clear, we have to address this fiscal problem but it will either be out of leadership or out of a crisis.”
A full recording of this lecture, including a question and answer session with the audience, may be viewed here. For more information on upcoming Lampert Institute’s events, subscribe to the Lampert Institute newsletter.
Michael E. O’Hanlon is a senior fellow and director of research in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy. He directs the Strobe Talbott Center on Security, Strategy and Technology, as well as the Defense Industrial Base working group, and is the inaugural holder of the Philip H. Knight Chair in defense and strategy. He co-directs the Africa Security Initiative as well. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia, Georgetown, and George Washington universities, and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
He also serves as a member of the Defense Policy Board at the U.S. Department of Defense. O’Hanlon was a member of the external advisory board at the Central Intelligence Agency from 2011–12. O’Hanlon’s latest book, Military History for the Modern Strategist: America’s Major Wars Since 1861 (Brookings and Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) was published in January 2023.
Maya MacGuineas is the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Her areas of expertise include budget, tax, and economic policy. As a leading budget expert and a political independent, she has worked closely with members of both parties and serves as a trusted resource on Capitol Hill. MacGuineas testifies regularly before Congress and has published broadly, including regularly in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and numerous other outlets. She also appears regularly as a commentator on television.
MacGuineas oversees a number of the committee’s projects including the grassroots coalition Fix the Debt; the Committee’s Fiscal Institute; and FixUS, a project seeking to better understand the root causes of our nation’s growing divisions and deteriorating political system, and to work with others to bring attention to these issues and the need to fix them. Her most recent area of focus is on the future of the economy, technology, and capitalism.
Previously, MacGuineas worked at the Brookings Institution and on Wall Street, and in the spring of 2009 served on The Washington Post editorial board, covering economic and fiscal policy.