Yesterday, Jon Kyl was one of the few members who made any speech at all during the abbreviated business day of the U.S. Senate. He chose to speak about President Obama’s budget, which he characterized as spending far too much money.

Kyl called for bigger cuts in all sorts of spending. He said that these cuts are necessary in order to pay down the deficit. Furthermore, Kyl proposed taking money that had been devoted to the Troubled Asset Relief Program and directing it to pay down the budget deficit instead. Spending an amount like $700 billlion is too risky, he said, because the USA is having to borrow that money from the Chinese.

“The spending freeze is a good idea. So let’s not start it in the future, let’s start it with this year’s appropriations bills. I would also suggest other stronger measures right now. We can start with the TARP money, for example. Rather than using the TARP money to pay for another stimulus bill, as some of my colleagues have suggested, let’s use it to pay down the debt. That money, remember, was borrowed in the first place. We did not have $700 billion lying around. We went to the markets to borrow that, and we have to pay interest on it. A lot of it came from China.”

700 billion dollars certainly is a great deal of money to spend. Throughout his speech, however, steadfastly ignored another government program that is scheduled to spend just about that same amount: The U.S. military.

The proposed military budget that Barack Obama released yesterday breaks all previous records for military spending. It calls for Congress to devote 708 billion dollars to the military. Unlike spending on TARP, none of that money is going to be returned, and it pays for only one year’s budget. Next year, unless our government changes its habits, we can expect another proposed military budget of over 700 billion dollars.

Congress never approves the military budget exactly as proposed by the President, of course. It usually tacks on even more spending. The military’s budget has become a means through which members of Congress can send money to corporations that pump funds and organizational resources into political campaigns. It’s a zone of spending that few are willing to criticize.

Senator Kyl follows along with the crowd of politicians who regard military spending as beyond reproach. When it comes to the military budget, Kyl abandons the very principles of fiscal responsibility that seemed so forthright in his speech yesterday.

“Americans want this administration to confront the massive spending and massive debt it is accumulating in a meaningful way. The budget the President sent to Capitol Hill this morning does not do the job,” Kyl said. Given his refusal to look at reductions in bloated military spending, Senator Kyl isn’t doing the job either.