Michael O'Hanlon: Defense is the "single largest discretionary chunk" of government spending

Using impromptu visual aids, not as beautiful as Sharon Burke's PowerPoint but close enough, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute deftly demonstrated that while the cuts to the F-35 program would have little impact on the overall economy, it would transfer benefits to the rest of the military by eliminating the Marine variant of the aging military aircraft. The ADONIS Act, which would cut this program, is currently being held up by the committee's Republicans, who are blocking the bill from markup tomorrow due to a scheduling technicality.

The cuts to the F-35 program, O'Hanlon argued in his pie chart, would outweigh the value of all annual earmarks. A vast majority of government spending goes towards entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security, while the oft-vilified "pork-barrel" earmarks make up "a fraction of a percentage" of the federal budget, according to O'Hanlon.

Photo credit: Wade Vaughan, a fresh-faced young man with great promise