The Myth Dies

Last year BFAD’s Gordon Adams and Matthew Leatherman took to the pages of the Washington Post to debunk the myth that Republicans like defense spending while Democrats do not. Matthew returned to the same point during an event Monday on the Hill:

There is an idea percolating in Washington right now that Democrats favor defense cuts and Republicans don’t. That hasn’t been substantiated by the evidence as far as I can tell… When you adjust for inflation, our national defense budget has been declining for the past two years. That’s this Congress. Even if the high end of the appropriations, which is the House side, were enacted, it would still be a nominal freeze. And again, adjusting for inflation, it’s a cut. It would be year three of cuts. We are already two years into this build down; a third year is coming irrespective of what position is enacted.

New data from our survey, conducted together with the Program for Public Consultation and the Center for Public Integrity, inspired this event and showed that both Republican and Democratic congressional districts support defense cuts.  To hear more about what defense budget average Americans would build, see C-SPAN’s video of the event.