OPINION: The importance of confirming Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense

From left to right: Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Prospective Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama, Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan (photo courtesy of Dept. of Defense/Flickr)

Chuck Hagel has a good history. Because of his fairly clean, relatively moderate and free-thinking background, it’s not particularly surprising that he was chosen by President Obama to be the next Secretary of Defense. As a Republican senator from Nevada, Hagel voted largely along Republican Party lines, receiving a lifetime rating of 84 percent from the American Conservative Union. After retiring from the Senate, he entered the realm of academia as a professor at Georgetown University.

So what are the implications of having this moderate, somewhat unobtrusive former senator as the Secretary of Defense? From my perspective, the prospective confirmation of Hagel would be an extraordinarily smart step toward financial security for the United States.

Because more than 50 percent of discretionary spending in the United States goes to the Department of Defense, and because we spend more of warfare than the next 20 countries combined, most of us who look forward to retiring before the age of 80 would hope to see someone in the federal government say: "Wait a minute, do we really need more tanks? Do we really need to maintain 3,000 strategic nuclear weapons? Is it crucial that we devote our dwindling resources to forcefully spreading democracy around the world?"

Hagel, who voted for the war in Iraq, has since come out in opposition to some of the surges of troops. This shift in opinion suggests that he wouldn’t find my concerns with this futile war so outlandish. Furthermore, Hagel is a supporter of the Global Zero initiative, which pushes for a world free of nuclear weapons. This was a point of major contention at his confirmation hearing, yet his solidarity with the movement indicates his willingness to support reduced government spending on these money pits.

While Hagel’s nomination in itself would be a firm foot forward in the direction of fiscal responsibility, and will bring a great mind to the forefront of American politics, his confirmation would have wonderful consequences for Obama as well. In nominating Hagel as Secretary of Defense, Obama has presented a spectacular strategy. Not only with this move does he show an interest in bipartisanship, but it allows him to reinforce his Lincoln-like strategy of a team of combatants, fostering internal competition in order to produce incentivized outcomes.

As shown by the Feb. 14 result of Democrats not garnering enough support to prevent a filibuster, all but four Republican senators are under the impression that the President of the United States should not be able to choose his own administration. This setback is nothing but a disservice to those serving our country and a frustration for civilians who wish to see cuts in government spending from this administration.

The concern among Republicans which lead to the opening for a filibuster, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), was the concern over the handling of the Benghazi attacks. For some reason truly unbeknownst to me, after Congress cut almost $300,000,000 from the State Department’s security budget, the attacks on the poorly secured consulate in Benghazi are still Obama, Hillary Clinton and now Chuck Hagel's fault.

Hopefully this pointless, dangerous setback will be soon be overcome so Hagel can take his rightly deserved spot at the Pentagon. 

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