President Obama’s budget hit Capitol Hill with all the enthusiasm a close talker with bad breath receives when getting on an elevator. Republicans rushed to news cameras with vigor usually only seen from Senator Chuck Schumer to rightly denounce it and Democrats released written statements with tepid “good starting point” type phrases in it. While Republicans have offered varying degrees of good ideas for places to cut the budget, few have dared to touch the Defense Department. This is a fool’s game. National defense is the first priority of the federal government, or should be, but to assume there aren’t cuts and savings that could be found in a department with a nearly $700 billion budget is as crazy as it is dishonest.

Medicare and Social Security should, no, HAVE to be on the table. Reforming those and getting their long-term costs under control are as important to our nation’s future as is winning the War on Terror is. If our elected officials continue to refuse to address the coming crush of these programs Al Qaeda doesn’t have to fire another shot or do anything but wait us out in caves until we collapse under their unsustainable weight to win. Unfortunately “progressives” have, for years, refused to even acknowledge they are facing any problems, let alone that they’re potentially a cancer that can bring this country down.

Every attempt to reform these entitlements in the past has been met with indignation, denial and demonization, and they were successful in blocking them. But times have changed, the old playbook is as useful as the Statue of Liberty play in football – it might work every once in a while, but it’s no longer something for which people are unprepared. The mood in the country is different. All the old talk of the sky falling if these sacred cows are touched has been drowned out by the fact that these sacred cows are going to crush us long before the sky gets its chance. If we don’t address the crisis with these programs it will be like getting hit by a train and blaming the conductor. We were on the tracks, we saw the light and we knew it wasn’t going to swerve. Not getting off the tracks is our fault, not the train’s.

Republicans know this and will use it to their advantage when it comes time to make the tough choices they were elected to make. Hopefully…

But Republicans aren’t without fault in this equation either. Where the Left has drawn their line in the sand on the entitlement programs, Republicans have drawn their line around the Pentagon. National defense is, without a doubt, the most important service the government provides, and it is also one of the few federal governmental duties explicitly laid out in the Constitution. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t significant savings to be found there.

Not being a defense expert, finding billions in potential savings will have to be reserved for someone whose job it is to know these things. That being said, after a simple search of the military newspapers, I’ve managed to find a way to save $804 million without missing a step.

In the 1990s the Pentagon was moving on missile defense systems, led by the success of the Patriot Missile. The Patriot was designed for shorter range missiles, if you remember their use against Scud Missiles in the first Gulf War. There was a need for defense against medium-range missiles from a 360 degree radius, something the Patriot wasn’t designed to deal with, so the Medium Extended Air Defense System, or MEADS, was born.

While a good idea at the time, the MEADS program hasn’t come along as quickly as it was supposed to, cost more than expected and the 360 degree threat never materialized. More than that, the Patriot Missile is advancing to the point that it will be capable of doing what the MEADS program was supposed to do in just a few years, before MEADS would go online.

In classic government style, instead of ending the program, the Pentagon has decided to continue it until the current spending, which was put in place in 2004, runs out – another $804 million. The Pentagon has no intention of using the missile, but they’re going to continue to pay for it rather than end it and save the money. Even some in the German government, one of the two partner nations in the MEADS program (the other being Italy), are on board with canceling the project after the money runs out, and some are wondering why not cancel it now and save the money? Good question.

If I can find $804 million in savings with minimal effort, just imagine how much someone whose job it is to root out waste and unneeded programs could find.

Republicans can gain the high-ground in the argument for reigning in government spending by demonstrating a willingness to look where they traditionally have refused to – the Pentagon. This move would help put the pressure on Democrats to step into reality and address the coming crush of entitlements. While $804 million in a $3.7 trillion budget may seem like small potatoes, a lot of small potatoes add up to a lot, but you can put together a sack of potatoes without the first one.

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