Why Should We Care About America's "Offensively Meager" Defense Budget? | with U.S. Congressman Don Bacon
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And welcome once again to Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific, brought to you by our producer, IEJ Media, and our sponsor, Power Group Asia. I am the former military officer, Ray Powell, here in California, over there in New York is my co-host extraordinaire and the former diplomat, Jim Caruso. How are you, sir?

Extraordinaire, apparently. Well, speaking of extraordinary, we have an extraordinary guest today, and that would be Representative Don Bacon. He is a Republican U.S. representative for Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District. He has been serving since 2017 after retiring from the United States Air Force, woo-hoo, in 2014, following 29 years of military service as a brigadier general.

He represents the districts that includes the capital of Nebraska, Omaha, and serves on key committees such as armed services and agriculture. Now, Representative Bacon, more immediately in the January edition of National Review magazine, you penned an article entitled Our Defense Budgets Are Offensively Meager.

And by the way, there was also another in Breaking Defense in February entitled, Enough Talking About Defense Innovation, It's Time to Make Choices and Move Out. A very military way to put that, which I appreciate. But more to the point, why should we care if America's defense budget is offensively meager? Well, right now we're spending 2.9% of our economy on the defense, which is the lowest we've spent since 1940. And we had the Pearl Harbor attack happen in 1941.

And we've not spent this little as a share of our economy going back to pre-World War II. And frankly, that's a scary thing. 2.9% is not enough to remodernize our nuclear triad. It's not enough to produce fifth and sixth generation fighters.

to produce enough attack submarines that we need and also to take care of the quality of life for a service amount of women. We're not able to pay them at the level to keep them off SNAP and food banks. We're not taking care of their dorms or the barracks to a degree that we should. Some of our health care has fallen behind. So if you want to have a quality of life for our military and to have a military that can stand up to China or Russia,

You got to do more than 2.9 percent. We're shooting for 4 percent this year. And so it's going to be about 100 and 150 billion dollar increase, just a little under that for the military. I think it's needed. So, Congressman, you talk about innovation, how important it is.

But part of innovation, of course, is doing what we're seeing in Ukraine, using fairly inexpensive weaponry to combat large-scale fixed exquisite weaponry. Are we doing enough of that? Do you see that happening?

and we're not moving fast enough obviously what you see right now in ukraine is the need for very good air defense capabilities a lot of this we've designed and built but we don't have it for our own country and we really don't have adequate course for our forces overseas so and also the drone technology the russians and ukrainians have outpaced america in this area we have brought our drones to ukraine and they are outclassed uh the the electronic warfare

that the Russians are using are degrading our technology from America. So the Ukrainians have had to move out without us and innovate on their own. And obviously what they're doing is incredible. What happened this weekend when you destroyed 41 strategic bombers with $5,000 drones, taking out a third of the strategic bombing fleet of Russia, that was an incredible feat.

thing. And it was done through innovation. And what I find in our military right now is just a lot of talk, a lot of planning. We're not seeing a lot of results. And that was the crux of my article. Stop talking. Let's get it done. Let's move out and make some decisions and start fielding capabilities. We have some great plans with drones, but plans don't win wars. You got to have the capability and we're not producing it.

So you noted in your article that back during the George W. Bush administration, we were up at around 4% of GDP, which of course is your target again for this budget. But many people had argued during the George W. Bush administration, we were fighting two wars. Why do we need as much now as we did then? Well, we were fighting a war in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's why we were 4%.

But at the same time, we didn't upgrade our bomber fleet. I mean, the B-2s are three years old. We only got 19 of them.

We have 60-year-old B-52 bombers. Our ICBM fleet, the Minuteman III, they're 50 years old. They can't be extended. And we have our Ohio-class submarines right now are at the end of their shelf life. So, yeah, we spent 4% of our GDP on Iraq and Afghanistan, but we didn't do any major innovations or, I should say, modernizations of things that we need to counter China. Now, we're producing the F-35s.

That's good, but we need to be looking at the next generation fighters for that. We're only producing one attack submarine. That is the coin of the realm to deal with China is attack submarines. And we are producing one of yours is not enough. So I would just submit to you at 2.9%, we're not going to be able to modernize the way we need to for a China fight and take care of our troops. By the way, to Ronald Reagan, when we were fighting no wars,

We were spending 6% of our economy on the military. So I think I can make a case 4% is where we should be, and we should try to sustain that. So the other aspect of our military, of course, is the whole dime concept. It's not just the military. It's all of U.S. power.

And our concern... Jim, go ahead and spell out dime for our audience. No. I know what it is. You guys do it. I just know the acronym. Diplomatic, information, military, and economic. And that's why he's a member of Congress and I'm not. But it's still all of US power, all of national power. And frankly, our concern is that a key part of this is our alliances. And our alliances seem to be

under threat. Now, this review from the outside, how do you see it? And how do you agree that the former military officer alliances are a key advantage the U.S. enjoys? Well, I tend to agree. Our party right now is in a tug of war with itself. I'm an old school Republican. I believe in diplomacy. I believe in having alliances, you know, a strong economy. I do think that we, under this president, a lot of the people who support him are even more so our

They don't hold a lot of regard for alliances, and I think it's hurt us. I was talking to a business, a major company in Omaha yesterday,

And they're talking about the challenges that they're having working in Canada right now because the Canadians don't want to do any business with Americans right now. I think it's just an example of what we're seeing, not only in Canada, maybe a little bit in Mexico, but in Europe right now, there's just anger with how this administration has dealt with them. So I think we're seeing these alliances strained. And I have a very clear view. America is the leader of the free world.

China is our pacing threat, long-term threat. Russia is a near-term threat. They invaded Ukraine, and they're a threat to their neighbors. They shot down two airliners. They're severing cables with our allies, underwater cables. I could just go on and on. We're dealing with a leader who's killed or murdered all his adversaries.

And to deal with Russia and China and also have your eye on Iran and North Korea, you've got to have alliances. We can't do it by ourselves, but we are the leaders, but we've got to have a strong team to deter these threats. And so that means you've got to have a strong diplomatic effort.

And I think also when you start talking about tariffs, that's undermining the economic strength that we have as well. I would do tariffs a lot more targeted, maybe focus on one or two problem areas, but to go against 80 countries and it's like being at war with everybody else at the same time, I don't think that's too effective. So I do have concerns right now where this administration is going on the diplomatic front, I would say, and the economic side of it as well.

So on the topic of alliances and our partners, one of the things that the administration has been doing recently has been to sort of lecture our allies on their own defense expenditures. Now, at the time when we're spending still less than 3%, what is our standing to go abroad and say you should be spending 5%, in some cases even 10% of your GDP on defense?

Yeah, you know, the president came out and said 5% should be the new standard. You know, we're at 2.9%. I think we will get to 4% by the end of this year. But it's not lost on me. There's a sense of irony there. And, you know, I play chess, and you've got to think through three moves. When you say something, what's the other side thinking or doing? And, you know, how are you going to respond to that response? And I feel like in this case we've not done that well enough.

We should acknowledge the fact that we're under spending on defense right now and that we as a with all of our allies need to do more. You know, like China on paper, they say they're spending about one hundred seventy billion on defense. But better analysis right now says it's more like seven hundred billion. And then you got Russia spending significantly over five percent of their their economy on the military right now. It's a much higher and they're malevolent. I mean, they're.

They're doing things that are a threat to us right now and to our allies. So we don't have time to waste here to get our act in order and to get our defense posture where it needs to be. Another aspect of this administration seems to be the belief that Europe should take care of Ukraine and we'll take care of the Indo-Pacific. But in the work Ray and I do, we see a lot of concern in Asia that so as Ukraine goes, so goes Taiwan. Right.

Do you see that connection? Yeah, I do, because if you can't have moral clarity about Ukraine, a victim of a Russian invasion, this is a war of choice by Putin. And he's, I think, the latest numbers I've seen, 835,000 Russian casualties that's killed and wounded. And if we don't have the moral clarity to see what's going on there, how are we going to have the clarity to really defend Taiwan? I think I heard from Nikki Haley, you know, if you...

Can't trust America and Ukraine. Can Israel trust these same people when it's all said and done? I think our actions speak very loud in Ukraine. And what I've seen is a lack of moral clarity from this administration on it. Like they're two different countries at war over a border. That's not it. Russia is invading Ukraine.

Period. Right. And Putin's the dictator, not Zelensky. But if you can't get that right, I would lose confidence if I was Taiwan or if I was Israel, because to me, it's just not a one off then on this over here. It's just a fact is the way they've talked to our allies is it does not.

I mean, I think a lot of our allies, when I talk to them, they're just trying to survive the next three years to hope for somebody better afterwards. And that's a shame. We need this three years to make our alliances stronger.

So last year, we had the chance before he was a part of this administration to interview Elbridge Colby. Of course, now he's the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. And one of the points that he made is that we have been guilty in the past of over-assuring our allies when we actually, what we need to do is be more upfront and realistic with them. And, you know, I'm really confrontational about some of what they are doing. How do you come down on that? Well, we should be clear. We have a NATO...

And if a NATO country is attacked, we're going to respond. I think it was good that President Trump pushed them to spend over 2%. This is back in 2017 and 2018. I think we saw a lot of countries respond to him pushing to do that. The Russian invasion of Ukraine really was the impetus for a lot of this, though. I think the problem is when I hear the administration speak, I don't see – it's not like a lack of assurance. It's really –

a misguided outlook on what's going on. I mean, there's like a lack of clarity who's at fault in the Russia-Ukraine. There's...

It's not that they see values and freedom, free markets, rule of law, that America has to be an advocate for it. What I see more is a transactional, okay, what's in it for me kind of mindset. And I don't think that's good. America, we should have some transactional mindset. I get that. We should have some realism protecting our country's interests. But we've got to have some idealism.

in this as well. America stands for freedom, free markets, rule of law. Without America, there's going to be a big void, and Russia and China is going to fill that void. That's not a safer world. And we lived through this in the 1930s. A lot of the same statements are being made. You would have heard from the Hoover Republicans back then the same thing. Well, that didn't turn out well. And so I think there should be honesty with our allies, but I'm seeing

a misguided worldview more than anything. America should defend our alliances and the importance of them. I don't see that right now with this administration. So Secretary Hegseth was in Singapore this past week at the Shangri-La Dialogues where he talked pretty forcefully about America first. It's not being America alone and we need our allies and partners, but they have to step up and do more.

But he also put a coda, which was you also have to choose between U.S. and China, basically. And that's a tough choice when we're raising tariffs and some other things that pressure their economies. Do you have a view of how this may come down? Well, generally, I've been a critic of the secretary in the past, but I thought for the most part his message was pretty good.

on this trip. But you're right. Again, you've got to play chess. If you're going to say, hey, you've got to be with us or China, then you've got to say, okay, they're going to bring up tariffs. I think we could have done a lot of this tariff stuff so much better. You know, EU, we didn't have to put a tariff on all these EU countries. We should have sat down and talked to them. We've got an agreement with Australia. Yes, they've been blocking our beef, but they're our ally. We should be able to work our way through this without

going to the mat on tariffs right up front. The real problem is China. China subsidizes their industries, bankrupts some of our companies in the process. They buy our technology or steal it, and then they use it for their use. A lot of times I get calls from Nebraska business folks that say the beef they ship to China is sitting in a port and the Chinese won't unload the

So there's – I think we should focus on China primarily. I find it ironic we've got tariffs on 80 countries but not Russia. To me, that would be one of the obvious countries I'd tariff the hell out of. I'm not necessarily totally anti-tariff. I sure would like to have a little more science behind it, targeted. In the end, we want free trade as much as we can. You get the best products at the best price, the most efficient manner when you have free trade. But –

It is interesting to say to our allies, you need to get on board with us. I like how China did. But it ignores all the other dialogue that's going on in this White House. So your point's well taken. I would just say most of the message I thought this weekend from the secretary was a pretty good one. I wish you talked about Russia in the same way.

So one thing that wasn't talked about very much during last year's presidential campaign was China and specifically, well, China was talked about, but specifically the threat to future conflict over Taiwan. And

A couple of our other guests we've had on over the past year have included Admiral Phil Davidson, who, of course, is the former commander of Indo-Pacific Command, who became associated with what was called the Davidson window, that we needed to be ready for a Chinese move on Taiwan by 2027. And then General Mike Minahan, who famously put out a memo to his commander saying we had to be ready to fight by 2025. And looking around, this is actually 2025.

Do you sense a proper sense of urgency amongst your colleagues there in Congress and in the administration that we really need to be looking at the potential for war in East Asia in the near future? By the way, Gerald Minahan replaced me in Europe. I was the deputy commander of Third Air Force and I left and he came in behind me. So he did he did a lot better than I did. Four stars. So I I see a lot of talk.

Bottom line, there's talk. Until the president of the United States take it seriously, which we are right now, we're going to plus up our military a little under $150 billion this year. But we just went the last two years doing a CR, continuing resolution, which in reality means the military was not being taken care of the way it should have been. And so it's hard to say we're going to face China, we're going to do all these things, and we're going to do two years of CR. So what I see is the president and Congress saying,

We're talking about China, but the reality is we haven't dealt with it, honestly. I think it's going to change this year with our reconciliation bill that is really focused on defense. But there's been a lot of talk and lots of little action out of this country. Yeah.

Can I follow up with you on the continuing resolution piece? Partly because I want to make sure that our audience understands why you think that's important. And partly because this is a great opportunity with a U.S. congressman on the show to be able to talk about what can be done to get us out from under this seemingly perpetual reliance on continuing resolutions to fund defense. Yeah.

So there's various reasons why we've been having these CRs, continued resolution. But continued resolution, it means you're going to spend money at this year's level, and you're going to do the same amount the next year at the same level. So you're not going to get an increase. Actually, you're walking backwards because of inflation when you do this. And also, it prevents new programs from being started. And so in this, at least this last year, we did some.

We call it a tailored CR where we allowed for some new starts. We try to do some minor revisions to the CR to help out the military. But in the end, it's not the optimal way to run our country. And in the end, the military pays for it and our defense pays for it. And we're not responding the way we should respond to China when you keep doing these CRs. So

This year, we're going to have to make up some ground. Doing two years of CR means that our military fell behind. And so we got a lot of work to do this year in this defense bill. So I'm actually very curious. 29 years in the military. I'm sure there are many days you woke up and said, boy, if I was in charge, I would do this and that. So now you're in Congress and you're on the Defense Committee, Armed Forces Committee.

Why can't you do what you wanted to do or have you been able to? Well, we've done a good job in the Arbors Sources Committee. I feel like we produce a good bill every year. And it's more bipartisan probably than any other committee in Congress. There's 20 committees. So I think we're on the number one bipartisan committee. And we disagree on 5% maybe, but agree on 95%. The problem has been up –

Not counting this year, but in the previous years, you had like a Republican House, a Democrat Senate, and then a Democrat president. And there was an unwillingness for the three to get together and agree on a defense or on a budget. And so they end up just doing a CR.

and that's that's been like the fallback plan because if we want to raise defense spending then the democrats said well we want to raise non-defense and we could never get an agreement and so the cr became the fallback plan this year the president wanted a cr because he didn't want to negotiate with democrats essentially and i don't think the democrats are much mood to negotiate right now uh so

The fallback plan was to do another CR because that was going to vote against shutting down the government. And it means no funding at all going to the military. This year under reconciliation, this coming year, we're going to try to do a lot of this as Republican only. It's a shame on defense because most Democrats, Republicans, we agree on 90, 95 percent on the military. We could we could work this out.

most of these issues. But I'll just say it's been the hyper-partisanship that has resulted in these two years of CR. So there are a lot of defense priorities, and you've mentioned several of them. You've mentioned the fact that we need to be producing attack submarines. We have this AUKUS deal, which says that we need to be producing attack submarines for both ourselves and Australia. Yeah.

You mentioned in your article you talk about the next generation air dominance fighter or the sixth generation fighter, as we call it, now under the name F-47. F-47. Yes. And a future B-21 bomber force. And, of course, you've talked about personnel programs and trying to take care of people and their families, which is an expense that America has already.

Since the advent of the all-volunteer force, we spend a lot more on those kinds of programs than our adversaries do. What should be the priorities in all this, or is everything the priority? Well, I tend to agree with the administration that when it comes to weapons, we should be focused on China because it is the pacing threat.

What I don't care for, I told the Secretary of the Air Force today, they never mention Russia. I asked him, is Russia a threat? He said, yes. And I said, we need to hear that. However, the pacing threat technology-wise is China. And so we should be making one of our weapon decisions primarily with that threat in mind, I believe. And I think if you can handle China, you probably could do a pretty good job against Russia as well. But we need long-range precision weapons, right?

we need to have a strong air and missile defense capability we see what's going on in ukraine right now the city's being bombed we're seeing israel as well and that's going to happen to our cities at some point somebody's going to fire you're firing ballistic missiles in our cities and we got we ought to have the the opportunity to to defend against that we don't want to fight with china guam and all of our bases are are within range of their ballistic missiles

and they're very accurate so we got to so to me it's pretty obvious long range precision and we need to have air and space defense it's also clear that china's doing a lot of work on the drones the drone swarm technology and and we got to realize what happened in russia can easily happen here in the united states and we got to start working on that threat as well so i see those as priorities

We do need a strong nuclear deterrent. Hopefully we never use them, right? But with 50-year-old ICBMs, we're told that it can't be extended. To counter China, you need a bomber fleet that can penetrate strong air defenses, and that's the B-21. The B-2 is already sort of out of date with its stealth technology. So we can't ignore the nuclear deterrents. You've got to have it. And unfortunately, we've underinvested in it for two decades, and we're behind.

So do you ever go out to the Indo-Pacific area and talk to counterparts in legislatures in those countries and see what their concerns are?

Well, I've been to Taiwan, and I got to know the current vice president. There was a senator, so I had lunch with her a few years back, and then she was the ambassador here. And so I've been friends with her. I've been to Australia. I've been to New Zealand, been to Japan. And they also send their legislatures here, so I meet with them quite a bit. So I do get to hear their concerns. I think Australia, they're excited about AUKUS, but we've got to, like I say, we're not – again, we're talking, but we're not –

moving out fast enough to meet really the obligations that we have there. Taiwan, I think there was, I don't know what we owe them right now, but like a year ago, we were three or $4 billion short of the aid that we promised or things that they bought, but they were waiting delivery. If you want to prevent a war with Taiwan, you've got to get those weapons there now so that China, the communist government can say, hey, you know what? Our

amphibious fossil, but he hit by harpoon missiles. Taiwan's got all these sea mines. How are we going to navigate to the sea mines? We can fire missiles into Taiwan, but they've got to really get air defense. We need to have that stuff there so China can say, you know what? This is going to be a little too hard. It's going to be like

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is going to backfire on us. And that's what we wanted to think. But when we're billions and billions of dollars behind delivery of these capabilities to Taiwan, I think it undermines our deterrence. And day one of the war with China and Taiwan, it's too late. So that's what I hear from Taiwan's side.

So besides being a defense hawk, you're also something of a deficit hawk, right? So you talk a lot about the national debt and the need to bring that down. How do those two impulses interact when you're talking about budgets? Well, we need to do both, no doubt about it. The real problem on deficits right now is 73% of our spending is mandatory spending. And so about 27% is

discretionary spending, of which half of that is military. So about half of our discretionary money goes to defense. But the lion's share of our spending is mandatory, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, also the interest on our debt, which right now exceeds what we're spending on the military. That's a red flag. And the real issue is, in 1950, we had 30 workers for every retiree.

And so our withholdings, you know, easily pay for Social Security and things like that. We're going now down to two workers for every retiree. It's like 2.5 right now, headed to two. And the withholdings that we have for Social Security and Medicare are inadequate for the outlays to pay for this growing retiree population.

Unfortunately, we lack the political will right now to have an honest discussion on this. So the land share of our deficits is because we've got a growing retiree population and the withholdings do not measure up to what we need at a two to one ratio versus used to be 30 to one. A lot of people don't realize when Social Security was created, the payout was at 65, but the life expectancy at that time was 64.

So just want you to think about that. Right. It's that's today. It's 79, I believe. And so we need to have a supported debt commission, half Republican, half Democrat, bringing the experts. I think we can solve this stuff. It may be right now we capsule security payments at one hundred seventy thousand dollars salary. If you earn over that, you don't have to pay in.

So those things like that we can review and say, okay, what can we tweak to save these programs? They're going to go and solve it in nine years. So looking at caps, maybe adjusting the retirement age, doing things like that, we can bring the stuff under control, if you ask me, and I guess deal with the retirement question honestly and effectively.

But right now we're ignoring this issue and it's created a $36 trillion debt. And that's bad. I mean, we have a $22 trillion economy and we're at a $36 trillion debt. That, according to banks and

Financial people, we're underwater significantly. And so just a quick follow-up. So, of course, there are going to be people who say, well, how can you be calling for more spending on defense when you're talking about this $36 trillion debt? Well, I think we've got to deal with the debt, but it's got to be dealt with adjusting the caps on Social Security and Medicare, maybe adjusting the retirement age by a year. I just came back from London. Their retirement age is 70.

right now. So consider that. So we're at 67. So there are other countries that are ahead of us in dealing with this, honestly. So I think we got to raise, we got to take care of our military. We got to raise our spending on it. But we need to have the political courage to sit down with the folks across the aisle and make this where we all win some and lose some and try to solve this debt problem on Social Security and Medicare.

I also argue that legal immigration, legal immigration to expand our workforce is another thing to raise that two to one ratio. I agree. We were talking to Eli Ratner, the new undersecretary of defense for policy, who recently had an article in Foreign Affairs Magazine positing basically a Indo-Pacific defense policy.

alliance of some sort. I don't know if you've seen the article. What do you think of having a more formalized arrangement in that region? Yeah, I think we used to have one called, what's it, CEDO or something like that. And we used to have something like that, Southeast Asia Treaty. Right. Right now we have a lot of bilateral agreements. We've got bilateral with Japan, bilateral with Australia. Now we've got AUKUS there.

I find it interesting when I talked to the previous four-star that had the Indo-Pacific Command four-star, I asked about, why do we have this all bilateral? Shouldn't we make this multilateral? And so it's good that Japan is working with Australia, that Japan's working with South Korea, and have this more of a

multilateral versus all these bilats and they weren't too keen on at the time I don't and I don't know why I guess I disagree with it I do think the future would be better if we built a NATO-like organization that had Australia Japan Philippines perhaps South Korea and things like that and treated more on NATO type agreement I would support that I think it makes sense

So in your article, you conclude that America is the indispensable power for freedom. You talked about what you referred to kind of as a moral deficit in our foreign policy, that we don't seem to have a moral component or ideological or an idealistic component to it. Speaking as a Republican, I think that's a good point.

I mean, how do you try to bring the Republican Party back to having sort of a sense of idealism about being this indispensable power for freedom? Is this a lost cause in the Republican Party? Or is there a way to sort of get the Republican Party back to having a moral component to its foreign policy? Well, the 1930s Republicans were isolationist, protectionist,

a bit nativist at the time. They didn't want to have anything to do with Europe. We're a little worried about the far East, uh, but that's what about history or that's what the Republicans were in the threes and it failed. It failed miserably. Uh, you can't ignore what's going on in Europe or you can't ignore what's going on in Asia. You can't ignore, you got to deal with the world. Honestly, we, we had the biggest economy at that point and we could have been, you know, much more prepared, but we chose not to. And it led to world war two. Uh,

I ultimately blame Germany and Japan for what happened, but we were unprepared when that started. So I feel like we're having this debate in our party right now. We have an isolationist populist wing that sounds much more like the 1930s. I'm more of the Ronald Reagan. And I think it's – the way I believe my role here is is not to be quiet. I think being quiet or trying to play along and get along and follow the crowd, I don't –

I don't see that as my role. My role should be to speak up and try to debate and argue for what I believe in. And hopefully over time, people will say, you know, this isn't working. Uh, you know, the, what, where the isolations are trying to take us. And, uh,

I'd like to be the guy that speaks up and they come back and say, you know, Don Baker was right. And one of my role models, I got a lot of role models, one of them was Winston Churchill. He spoke up in 1932 about Germany and the threat that Nazis posed. And he lost a lot of his power. He was put in the wilderness. They called it the wilderness years. But he spoke up. And even when he was unpopular and really had little power other than having a seat in the parliament,

But by 1940, people say, you know, there's one guy that was right this whole time. That was Winston Churchill. And so I admire the fact that he had courage to speak what he believed was true and he solved the threat clearly. And he did it even though it was unpopular. I see a little bit the same with Abraham Lincoln. I mean, he was early talking about slavery and it was not popular, right? Not a popular topic. Even in the North, in most cases, talking about slavery, it's like, well, let's let the South worry about it.

But I think it's important to speak up and hopefully over time people will say, you know what, this isn't working. But what people like Don Bacon are saying is it takes us back to our Republican roots. Well, from your lips to God's ears, Congressman Baker, that's very well said. I guess my last question for you is this.

Is there a grouping of people like you who want to work on a bipartisan basis to move things forward on defense and our national security as a whole, especially within the Republican Party? Because you seem to be a voice in the wilderness. Yeah, there's, you know, like we have the problem solvers and we have about 30 Republicans, 30 Democrats that we work together right now. We're sort of

on a hiatus because of the reconciliation and unfortunately reconciliation is a very partisan process i've been on the minority side i've been on the majority side of these and it's not good for bipartisanship i'll just say that but there are about 60 of us half and half on the prowl servers i'm also on the four country caucus and we have about

20 and 20 and we're up for veterans who want to work together and I find the veterans in Congress are better working across the aisle. We're able to see a problem and figure okay, how do we solve this problem together? That's where the military thinks so there is a fair number and feel that feel the way I do. Obviously it's gonna take more than what we have and I think the voters have got to demand more more of this but unfortunately

Out of 435 districts, I'd say about 400 are very red or blue. And so you don't get a lot of push for bipartisanship in those kind of districts. So literally about 400 of our 435 districts, they're bright blue or bright red. And that leaves about 35 that just determine who the majority is. And often the most bipartisan members of Congress come from these 35 districts. And so...

I don't know. In the end, the voters are going to have to want more solutions and more results and not just yelling and screaming. Well, Representative Don Bacon, you've been a fascinating interview. I wonder if people want to. I've mentioned before to you that you're one of the more interesting follows on social media. If people do want to follow what you're putting out and some of the ideas that you're you're putting forward, where should they follow you?

My official Twitter is RepDonBacon or X now. I also have my personal one I use a little less often as DonJBacon. That's sort of my political or my personal Twitter. But I do most of my stuff on RepDonBacon. And I have a bad habit of responding to people. And most of it, I like trolling the trolls. These angry people, I have to poke at them a little bit.

Well, I have a few of those myself, but they mostly are either in Beijing or take their cues from those people. So I feel your pain a bit, sir. Well, we do want to thank you. This has been a tremendous interview. We want to thank you for coming on. We know you've got a really busy schedule, and we do hope that you are feeling emboldened and empowered by the people who do hope for some of those bipartisan solutions, at least on the topic of foreign policy and defense.

You know, I feel like in the end, I'm a Christian first. I'm an American second. Republicans down the pecking order down here. And that's allowed me to have a little more freedom and just try to say things the way I see them. I don't need to pick a fight everywhere I go. But on the important stuff, I want to be I want to be, you know, I want to stand up and and be counted. So I appreciate that. Thanks so much.

And the fantastic sponsor for the Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific podcast is Bauer Group Asia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific. Bauer Group applies unmatched expertise and experience to help clients navigate the world's most complex and dynamic markets. Jim Caruso is a senior advisor with Bauer Group, and you can find them at their website, bauergroupasia.com.

Jim, you know, the topic of defense spending is highly current and highly relevant to many around the Indo-Pacific, not only because they're thinking about it, but because we're telling them about it. It is. And, you know, the congressman was talking about increasing our defense spending. But we spend a lot. There's no doubt. It's a big chunk of change.

There's much talk in this administration about waste, fraud, and abuse. I don't know how much fraud and abuse there is, but it is a question of whether we should be spending so much on so-called exquisite systems that can be taken out with a $5,000 drone. And maybe we need to reallocate.

Well, I mean, so one of the things that's come out of watching the war in Ukraine is this weird amalgamation between what people refer to as sort of World War I trench warfare tactics and drone warfare and cyber warfare at the other end of the spectrum. And so, you know, it is a reality that

Even as we have to be very cognizant about the changes brought about by all of these leaps forward and advances in technology, and as you mentioned, the advent of very, very inexpensive weapons that seem to be able to get around our expensive solutions. At the same time, there are still human beings sitting in miserable conditions in trenches across a lonely battlefield from one another, lobbing artillery shells.

It is amazing that in over 100 years, we're still doing that. Yeah.

So I do, I'm fascinated by our conversations with our elected representatives. Of course, we've had not just ours, but others from Taiwan and the Philippines and Australia and other places. So it's always important to hear from these political actors. But Representative Don Bacon is kind of a unique character because he has very strong, as he said, Reagan-esque views on politics.

national security. And in a lot of ways, that is the national security and foreign policy view of many in the other parties' establishment, right? So you might associate a lot of his views more with things that you see in the Democratic Party than in much of the Republican Party these days. Yeah, it's a funny thing. When I was growing up, I thought we had...

a federal system of three equal, co-equal branches of Congress, not a parliamentary system where you have a head of state and head of government in the same body of a prime minister. So this to me means each member of Congress is his own person elected by his constituents to represent them, not to be a member of a party or to show the party line. There are not many of those left, but Don Bacon is one. All right. This is enough politics for one day. Tell me a story, Jim.

All right. You and I, in our careers, dealt with a lot of so-called CODELs, congressional delegations that came through, embassies. And we often had to be their minders or tour guides or whatever you want to call that. And so when I was on my first tour in Australia, a group came in, a group of members of the House, and this was in December 2003. And Australia was going through a terrible drought, really awful. And

You remember there were fires. You weren't there, but you saw the remains. Huge fires. And this is while the CODEL is in town. And so this group of congressmen come in. And, you know, many members of our elected representatives have very elevated feelings about their positions and selves. We're crossing the bridge over the lake in Canberra, and there's the Captain Cook jet flying.

which sometimes spouts up out of the pond. And I said, huh, I thought because of the drought that that wouldn't be on. Meanwhile, you're looking at Parliament and the orange glow from the forest fires are there. And one of the members of Congress turns to me and say, oh, I'm sure it's because we're here. Nice. I...

I think one of my most memorable CODEL, congressional delegation experiences, was down in, also in Australia. I was in Sydney, and this was one where they were traveling with their spouses. And I have to say, having CODELs travel with their spouses is the worst idea ever.

I mean, you know, there's just no upside. And so I was called upon to give a little briefing to the congressional delegation as they were going out for their day around Sydney. I can't even remember what I was, some defense issue since I was the defense at S.A. And I remember standing there in the middle of all of these congresspeople and their spouses eating breakfast.

And it was clear, like two minutes into my spiel, that nobody was listening. And yet I had to go through the charade of going through all of these notes. And at the end, having these people look up with their mouth full of scrambled eggs saying, oh, yeah, well, it's a hundred year alliance and just sort of these meaningless things.

I remember thinking, because there actually are very, very good Codels. And it used to be said that it's actually one of the important things that we do. But why we think it's a great idea that they bring their spouses with them, I could just be honest. It's not our idea. Yes, I guess so.

All right. Well, it wasn't my idea to go and find Ian Ellis Jones to produce our podcast. He found me, but it's the best thing that's happened to us. And so we do thank him and IEJ Media for producing our podcast. And by the way, thank him in advance for all the extra editing he's going to have to do on this one because we had some technical difficulties along the way.

Go follow Ian Ellis Jones on X at Ian Ellis Jones. He's got some fantastic reports and graphics that he puts out that I think you'll find really interesting. Of course, if you enjoyed this episode, go. Okay, hang on. Because half of you have already tuned out. I know.

But I want you to tune back in. I want you to pull off to the side of the road and I want you to hit the like button and I want you to follow our podcast because it helps the algorithm and more people follow us. Got to do this. Look, we're putting this stuff out for free. You're not paying us a cent. All we ask is that you hit the little thumbs up or the five star thing. That's all we ask. Literally. Well, I mean, we might ask for more later. But anyway, so that's all we ask.

Also, you can follow us on social media. We just passed, I think, 1,700 followers on LinkedIn, which is a big milestone for us. And you can also follow us on X. And you can email us if you really want us to pay attention. Email us at IndoPacificPodcast at gmail.com.

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