`Peace Dividend' From Winding Down Cold War Would Disappear Into Sinkhole of U.S. Deficit
WASHINGTON -- A war begins to end. Billions in federal dollars, once earmarked for the military, suddenly become available for long-overlooked uses.</br></br>That was 20 years ago, when the Vietnam War began to wind down. But because there was little in the way of advance planning, the "peace dividend" was quickly gobbled up by inflation and increased spending by nearly every other agency of government.</br></br>Today, another war -- the Cold War -- is coming to an end. This time, the dividend will be larger, but so will the crowd of claimants wanting pieces of it. The No. 1 sinkhole: the federal deficit.</br></br>President Bush, anticipating many outstretched hands, warned Wednesday that the nation shouldn't expect a windfall of new social spending. "When I hear now `peace dividend,' " he said, some people think "if you cut defense spending by $10 billion, we can take that money and spend it on something else. They all have a wide array of programs. We can't do that. We've got enormous budget problems."</br></br>Private experts agree. "We didn't have the deficit problem we have now after Vietnam," explains William Kaufman, a Brookings Institution analyst and former senior Pentagon budget planner, who is studying ways that the military budget might be cut over the next decade.