Reminder: Where the Defense Dollars Are Spent

Top Ten defense spending locations in Virginia. Source: Office of Economic Adjustment

Just to remind people how heavily dependent Virginia is on defense spending… This graphic comes from the Defense Department’s Office of Economic Adjustment. The numbers include defense spending only, not spending by homeland security or intelligence agencies. (Hat tip: Steve Haner.)

Earlier this week I quoted Newt Gingrich as saying that the Pentagon bureaucracy is massively overstaffed and hinting that a priority of the Trump administration might be to whack that bureaucracy down to size. Along the same lines, the Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Trump is working with advisers to “restructure and pare back” the National Security Administration. The NSA headquarters is in Maryland, so I don’t know if that will have much impact on Virginia. But the larger point is that the president-elect holds few Washington arrangements sacred. If he’s willing to go after the NSA bureaucracy, he could well go after the Pentagon bureaucracy, the CIA bureaucracy and the Homeland Security bureaucracy.

Virginians need to pay close attention to these developments because, regardless of the wisdom of the bureaucracy busting, Virginia (and Maryland) will feel the impact more than the other 48 states.

This does not mean that the Northern Virginia economy is doomed, as one commenter to a previous post implied I meant. But a Trump administration assault on the federal defense/intelligence/homeland security bureaucracy potentially could amount to a Sequestration II for the Washington metropolitan area. Given the fact that NoVa now accounts for about 40% of Virginia’s gross economic output, when NoVa sneezes, Virginia’s General Fund budget catches a cold. And that matters to the Rest of Virginia.