The House Armed Services Committee will do its usual thing this year, exacerbated by the ideological campaign Chairman McKeon is running as part of the Republican battle plan in an election year. Fortunately, nobody is listening and the outcome will likely be pretty much what the Congress agreed to in the Budget Control Act last August. No need to hyperventilate here.

The usual thing is to mark back into the bill all the "stuff" the members of the committee want, but was taken out in the Administration's request. We'll see money for hardware, mostly - M1-A2 and Bradley upgrades the Pentagon doesn't need; a new site for missile defense the nation doesn't need, a UAV version that is too expensive. It is all stuff made somewhere - a collection of the normal pet rocks. And he will try to roll back the decision to reduce the size of the Army and Marines back to a bit more people than they had in 2001.

McKeon made room for it by increasing the budget above the Administration's request (with the ideological support of Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan). That's the part nobody is listening too. There is no doubt the House Appropriators (who are more important to this outcome than the HASC) will go along with the overall increase; Ryan said OK, the leadership said OK, and it doesn't matter, anyway.

It doesn't matter because the Senate Armed Services Committee will come closer to the President's budget (or maybe even less), and it will all have to be worked out in conference. Your pork for my pork, but the budget ceiling will be close to what the Congress already legislated as the cap on security spending last year.

Any serious change in defense budgets is going to await the election outcome. The appropriators will doubtless fail to agree before the election, and the Congress will vote a continuing resolution, at last year's level, pending the election. And defense won't affect the election outcome much.

Then the fun begins, because everything is on the table, and that means everything: the CR, the Bush tax cuts, the looming sequester (in January), the payroll tax, the doctors' fix, a new debt limit crunch, and more. And defense is just one piece in the mix, and not the most important piece. "Let's make a deal" becomes the game in November.

For all the ideological and political maneuvering by actors in the "defense stovepipe" - DOD, McKeon, and all - the defense budget is going down. Because the wars have ended or are ending. Because the deficit and the debt and the economy are more central to our security today. Because it can, having reached levels unprecedented since the end of the Second World War. The day-to-day struggles this year don't matter. It is time. It will happen.

Pondering the impressive array of military capabilities that are at the center of the current defense budget debates, I am greatly reassured by the high degree of security they provide for me personally and for the USA – whatever the exact outcome. The aching worries that have made sleep an exercise in anxious futility have dissipated. Just think of the protection that we can look forward to.

1. A missile defense shield for the Atlantic coast. No need to fret about WMD tipped missiles with lethal payloads targeting Charleston, Rehoboth Beach, or Kennebunkport. Morocco, Mauretania, and places farther east are no longer even an existential long-term threat. Nor is there reason any longer to cast a troubled eye at all those Honduran banana boats, oil tankers, Carnival Line cruise ships, and phantom Viking long boats that ply the waters of the North Atlantic. Of course, these vessels could be equipped with cruise missiles. Not to worry. A picket line of anti-cruise missiles in the thousands surely will be deployed against them from Ft. Lauderdale to Portland as soon as George Romney frees defense spending from the constraints imposed by the remnants of our social programs.

But isn’t it still true that Russia could smash us to smithereens and that we could not defend against their nuclear weapons? Of course. But that’s a retro perspective. Washington is talking 21st Century threats and New Age strategy.

2. Special Forces will be assigned to retraining significant elements of the conventional Army so as to ready them for fresh counter insurgency campaigns. Now numbering only 60,000, the SF are stretched thin defending freedom and the American way of life in the Congo, Mali, Chad, Mauretania, Georgia, Siam, the Philippines, Honduras, Peru, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Belize, Columbia and Mexico (scheduled) – leaving aside Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Yemen. Those engagements leave us shorthanded in dealing with yet other terrorist micro cells germinating somewhere in the great beyond. That grave situation finally is being remedied.

3. The CIA and the Pentagon will accelerate their plans for cross dressing. The Agency’s already formidable lethal capabilities are slated to be ramped up. The DoD’s multitasking that as of today encompasses an array of politico-intelligence activities, through the regional Commands, will be extended and enhanced. As for the State Department, it may be at risk of becoming lost in the shuffle. But let’s keep in mind that it commands the Baghdad Embassy - the greatest bastion of overseas diplomatic might that the world has ever known. 16,000 employees. Of whom, 3,000 fully armed mercenaries – reporting directly to Hillary. An air force of scores of drones able to clear routes for flying squads of Foreign Service officers and contractors to sally forth in their MRAPs to coordinate with more distant outposts of faded American power in Basra, Mosul and Erbil. They also will tender vital advice to whichever Iraqis may still be polite enough to feign listening. The cost for operating this Forward outpost of liberty? – a mere $6 billion per annum. Shortly, Baghdad II will be up and running in Kabul. The dual capitals of the virtual American Empire in Asia (AEA).

There are many, many more programs similarly critical to national security that are or will be amply funded. Sweet dreams all.