One might think that the current crisis roiling the American economy might be an opportunity for Senators Obama and McCain to spell out their differences on one important issue; U.S. military spending.

Consider the fact that on September 24th, during the fight over the Wall Street bail out, the House of Representatives passed, bill passed by a vote of 392-39, a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without any public protest or meaningful press comment. This show there is unlikely to be any significant pressure to cut military or related national security spending.

Instead, Senators Obama and McCain seem to be reading off the same page. That is the kind of bipartisanship we do no need. The time is long past for someone to stand up and say the obvious; that both military and associated “national security” spending is out of control and continually getting more outrageous.

The latter category includes nuclear weapons spending at the Energy department, plus the State department, as well as Veterans Affairs, and the intelligence agencies. All together that totals exceeds a trillion dollars annually.

Let’s stipulate that there are multiple factors which impact U.S. military spending. And yes, while the financial crisis will increase pressure to reduce military spending, other countervailing political factors will ensure that there likely will be no significant reduction.

Why is this? The primary reason is that the United States is at war, even if is an undeclared one and one which the country is largely disengaged and removed from. And no politician dares cutting military spending for fear of being accused being ’soft on defense” or not “supporting the troops.”

Unlike the situation at the end of the 1980s and early 19980s there is nothing comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which drove significant reduction in U.S. military spending.

Today the situation is reversed. The United States is fighting the “long war” (formerly known at the global war on terror) and politically both the incumbent administration and the opposition party are reluctant to cut military spending at such a time.

Sadly, there is nothing in the campaign platforms of either Sen. John McCain or Barrack Obama to suggest that they would significantly reduce military spending.

In fact McCain says the United States must enlarge the size of its armed forces. That alone will guarantee that operation and support costs, traditionally one of the highest categories of U.S. military spending will stay high.

Likewise Sen. Obama supports plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marines by 27,000 troops.

Indeed, just last Friday, Richard Danzig, a U.S. Navy secretary during the Clinton administration and a top national-security adviser to Barack Obama said he expects military spending during a Democratic administration wouldn’t drop. If one listened carefully one could hear champagne corks popping in the office of all major military contractors.

And then there was the announcement last week by outgoing Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas who said that the U.S. military wants an increase of $57 billion in fiscal 2010, about 13.5 percent more than this year’s budget of $514.3 billion. While that request would include costs that to date have been paid by supplemental appropriations it would still be a real increase.

What you heard from the Obama and McCain camps was deafening silence.

Finally, while one might think that Congress, which, technically holds the power of the purse, might be inclined to do something there is the longstanding Congressional tradition that by voting for more military spending, they are providing “jobs” for their economy, not to mention their constituents, as well a more general Keynesian pump-priming mechanism.

It is true that in the long run there are structural factors at work which may cause lower military spending.

Notably in a speech on Sep. 29 at the National Defense University Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the military must understand the limits of combat power and its leaders must be skeptical that technology can bring order to the battlefield.

He cautioned against efforts at reorganizing the Pentagon around buzzwords like “transformation,” which was not so veiled reference to the silver bullet technology approach championed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He challenged those who advocate investing in smaller numbers of higher-technology weapons in a belief that war can be revolutionized. “Be modest about what military force can accomplish, and what technology can accomplish.”

Gates said that the Pentagon has placed comparatively too much emphasis on developing high-technology weapon systems aimed at potential state adversaries such as China or Russia that take years to develop, he said, noting that the 2009 budget contains more than $180 billion for such conventional systems. But given U.S. military dominance in air, land and sea power, the Pentagon can safely shift away from building small numbers of highly advanced ships, aircraft, and other systems and instead purchase larger quantities of simpler, cheaper equipment.

Yet that de-emphasis, if it does happen, will take many years to unfold, and we can’t afford to wait.

The costs of the Iraq war are very substantial and will continue to rise for years to come, even if U.S. forces were withdrawn tomorrow. The Iraq war will cost far more in the next year than the Iraq portion of that $68.6 billion Congress has provided in the in the new military. Thus sometime in 2009 the direct costs of the war there, that the Bush administration once predicted would cost perhaps $50-60 billion in total, will cost more than $800 billion, or $100 billion above the cost (in the best case scenario) of the bailout of the financial system now being proposed in Washington. This excludes long-term costs such as payments of health care and veterans benefits, which ultimately could total somewhere between one-and-a-half and seven worth of bailout money.

Yet as long as the United States remains at war nobody expects to see a decline in military spending. Despite large war costs there is nothing comparable to the end of the Cold War, or the Great Depression that would drive military spending significantly downward.

Consider what Andrew Bacevich, retired Army officer and professor at Boston University, and author of the recently published book. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, wrote:

The quadrennial ritual of electing (or reelecting) a president is not an exercise in promoting change, regardless of what candidates may claim and ordinary voters believe. The real aim is to ensure continuity to keep intact the institutions and arrangements that define present-day Washington. The veterans of past administrations who sign on as campaign advisers are not interested in curbing the bloated powers of the presidency. They want to share in exercising those powers. The retired generals and admirals who line up behind their preferred candidate don’t want to dismantle the national security state. They want to preserve and, if possible, expand it. The candidates who decry the influence of money in national politics are among those most skilled at courting the well-heeled to amass millions in campaign contributions.