David J. Theroux: Founding Fathers' advice to deficit 'super committee': Bring US troops home

David J. Theroux is founder, president, and CEO of The Independent Institute and publisher of “The Independent Review.”

As the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (otherwise known as the deficit “super committee”) gets down to business, the 12-member panel should give serious consideration to what America’s Founding Fathers would have done to control federal spending. If the committee members did that, they would have little choice but to recommend that the Obama administration immediately begin a steady withdrawal of all US troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and reduce America’s military presence overseas.

It’s not that committee members will be unable to find other candidates for the $1.5 trillion in required cuts over the next decade, which must be presented to Congress by Nov. 23. There are lots of choices. Surely, entitlements, farm subsidies, corporate bailouts and giveaways, and pork of all kinds should be top candidates, as the Independent Institute’s online “Government Cost Calculator” demonstrates.

But America’s Founders also would be concerned about the reach and cost of our global military empire. It’s not part of the country they envisioned....