Military Town, USA

The United States spends an astronomical amount of money on defense. In 2010, the military budget represented nearly 6% of GDP. That accounts for 19% of the federal budget, 28% of tax revenues, and 40% of total spending on arms worldwide. Despite Mark Twain’s warning against “lies, damn lies, and statistics,” these numbers really only point in one direction regarding our country’s allocation of funds between guns and butter. When you’re spending six times more on defense than China, you’re spending a lot.

In general, then, it’s reasonable to suggest that we spend too much on our military, and this reasonableness only increases during a budget crisis. Jim Wallis and Pete Stark have both argued that any cuts in federal spending must extend to the Department of Defense. Congressmen Barney Frank and Ron Paul agree, adding a bipartisan flavor to the argument. Indeed, the Secretary of Defense himself has already announced considerable reductions in the Army and Marine Corps.

I take no position in this blog on the wisdom of reducing defense spending – or even of scaling back from the expansion associated with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the moment, I simply wish to make a point about the potential impact of defense cuts on rural and small-town America.

Tom Green County is one of the relatively sparsely populated, largely rectangular counties that constitute the region west of Dallas and San Antonio. The county seat is San Angelo, a city whose population (91,880 as of July 2008) belies cultural and psychological touchstones that make it feel more rural than urban. This is West Texas, after all. On the southeast side of San Angelo is Goodfellow Air Force Base, where many airmen receive training before taking on jobs in intelligence. Beyond the military personnel stationed at Goodfellow, many civilians work on the base in positions ranging from food servers to administrators.

Goodfellow is easily the largest employer in San Angelo and all of Tom Green County. With 4,990 employees, it provides jobs to roughly twice as many people as the area’s second largest employer. San Angelo is a military town, with businesses going out of their way to cater to their uniformed clientele.

In short, the military industrial complex is not limited to weapons manufacturers and mercenaries. For every Blackwater, there is also a San Angelo. In this and many other places, military installations are the foundation in the economies that have grown around them. Removing or shrinking a base may thus have an effect similar to closing the saw mill or coal mine that once defined a rural community. Even when the best policy is shutting down that mill or mine, we create whole new policy challenges in the aftermath.