The One Percent Solution

SHIRKING THE COST OF WORLD LEADERSHIP

A dangerous game is being played in Washington with America's national security. Call it the "one percent solution" -- the fallacy that a successful U.S. foreign policy can be carried out with barely one percent of the federal budget. Unless the next president moves urgently to end this charade, he will find himself in a financial straitjacket that frustrates his ability to promote American interests and values in an increasingly uncertain world.

Ultimately, the only way to end the dangerous one percent solution game is to develop a new national consensus that sees the international affairs budget as part of the national security budget -- because the failure to build solid international partnerships to treat the causes of conflict today will mean costly military responses tomorrow. Those who play the one percent solution game do not understand a post-Cold War world in which a host of international problems now affects Americans' domestic welfare, from financial crises and the closing of markets to global warming, aids, terrorism, drug trafficking, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Solving these problems will require leadership, and that will cost.

MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING

If this all sounds exaggerated, consider the way the one percent solution game is being played this year, when America has a GDP of nearly $10 trillion and a federal budget of over $1.8 trillion. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for $25 billion in the budget for fiscal year (FY) 2001, which begins October 1, for the so-called 150 Account, which covers the nonmilitary costs of protecting U.S. national security. OMB cut that figure to $22.8 billion to fit President Clinton's commitment to continued fiscal responsibility and limited budgetary growth. The congressional budget committees cut it further to $20 billion, or $2.3 billion less than the $22.3 billion approved for FY 2000. At the same time, the budget committees raised defense spending authority for FY 2001 to $310.8 billion -- $4.5 billion more than the administration requested.