Via TPM, what goes up can never go down:

The services have been laying the groundwork for the request for several months. Earlier this year, briefing slides showing $60 billion to $80 billion per year in new expenditures started making the rounds inside the Beltway, supported by a public campaign by conservative think tanks and politicians to establish a floor on defense spending at 4 percent of GDP.

The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit options for a Democratic Congress and president to pass new, and potentially costly, social programs, including health care reform.

They also like the idea of creating an unrealistically high baseline of expectations for defense spending that will allow them to claim President Obama has cut defense spending.

So at a time of economic crisis, the GOP wants to simply throw money at defense, mostly for political purposes. Way to be, guys.

 The informal alliance between the services and conservative think tanks threatens to further politicize the military. The abuse of national security arguments to win political arguments is both morally suspect and threatens the security of the nation by delinking strategic assessment from public policy.

Let me tell you what’s going to happen, and has always been destined to happen. Even as the nation struggles to come out of its economic funk, as unemployment rises, as mor eand more Americans find themselves going under, financially - we’re going to find more and more money to spend on defense. Even as we talk about deep cuts to social services and other programs - we’ll keep throwing yet more cash at defense. Because the one thing you can never do in this country is cut defense spending; no matter what percentage of the overall budget it sucks up. Hell, it could Hoover up 90 percent of the budget and Americans wouldn’t think of cutting it - we’d be too afraid. And it would become too much of a political football.

This is how empires hit the skids. But of course, only the disloyal dare even suggest it.