Hey, budget-watchers bored by the slow pace of Congress in this electoral year, guess what: Star Wars is back, and it’s playing at a theater near you! (Well, C-SPAN anyway).

This drama, complete with lasers and spaceships, is unfolding in the House of Representatives. It started last week when members of the Armed Services Committee released their subcommittee’s markup of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA maps the policy plan for all “national defense” spending, which consists mostly of the Defense Department (DOD) and Energy Department’s nuclear weapons budgets.

Each of the seven subcommittees added and cut some questionable things from the White House budget request, but the dollars really flew in the Strategic Forces Subcommittee. Chaired by Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH), the subcommittee—which oversees missile defense, nuclear weapons, and military space programs—boldly went where spending had not gone before, adding billions to already wasteful defense programs in the process. Highlights include:

• $356 million for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System. This system of missile silos based in Alaska and California theoretically intercepts missiles from Iran and North Korea before they reach the U.S. But the last two flight tests failed, and the system hasn’t had a successful test since December 2008. We have told DOD to freeze all new funding for the system until the technology proves itself. DOD cut about $250 million from last year’s $1.16 billion budget for the system, which piqued Turner so much he added the money back with some extra for good measure. The subcommittee turned up the volume further by requiring an intercept test with an intercontinental ballistic missile (previously unattempted) by the end of 2013. Even the Jedi mind trick couldn’t convince us this will work.
• $100 million as a down payment on a multi-billion effort to build a missile defense site on the East Coast. As if one dysfunctional ground system isn’t enough, this provision requires the Secretary of Defense to conduct an assessment of possible locations by the end of 2013 and make the site operational no later than December 2015.
• $4.3 billion for maintaining two extra nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. The subcommittee requires a minimum of 12 ballistic missile submarines in the fleet. The FY13 DOD budget request cuts the current fleet of 12 to 10 for a short period while replacement subs are developed. Yet only eight submarines are needed to carry the maximum number of warheads allowed under the New START treaty. Cutting the fleet to eight would also save serious money in a program already projected to cost $350 billion, more than the Navy’s entire shipbuilding budget.
• $200 million to make the new long-range strike bomber nuclear-capable. DOD planned to delay this step until later in the program’s development in order to control costs, which are already spiraling into the billions of dollars. The subcommittee required the Air Force to make certain that the bomber be able to carry nuclear weapons from the get-go.

These cuts have to be paid for elsewhere in the subcommittee budget, and members did cut funding for one turkey—the Medium Extended Altitude Defense System (MEADS)—but the system was already pronounced dead, so this was hardly a show of fiscal courage.

Why such theatrics in an election year when no budget bills are likely to reach the President’s desk? It’s the same old kabuki dance: Republicans want to express displeasure with the administration’s budget, and missile defense and nuclear weapons are traditional areas of discord between the two parties’ national security policy platforms. But we can’t afford to play partisan politics when our budget is in such flabby shape. These provisions should be stripped from the NDAA when the full committee votes on it next week. May the force be with us.

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 TCS Quote of the Week

“There shouldn’t be a division, a political division, between those who want to cut spending and those who want to raise revenue, if the way we get that revenue is by cutting tax expenditures.” — Martin Feldstein, a top adviser to President Reagan, arguing that lawmakers should agree on limiting tax credits and deductions as a means of deficit reduction. ( The Hill )