Rallying 'Round the Flag

Meanwhile, this thriving metropolis has been forested with strange, man-made flora: the hardened posts, known as bollards, cemented into the ground at strategic points to thwart car bombs; the slender poles blossoming with surveillance cameras; the stumpy boxes that give no outward sign of the radiation detectors inside. Above it all, like a forest canopy, rise the busy booms (that word again!) of the construction cranes. The stubby bollard and the towering crane, one representing fear, the other prosperity -- incongruous, yes, but also ubiquitous. They are the symbols of our time.

THE FIRST REACTIONS TO 9/11 included panic, disbelief, outrage, shock, sorrow, fury and a righteous patriotism. There was a lot of speculation about crowds at the military recruiting stations and a general wave of bear-any-burden determination. It was a blood, sweat, toil and tears sort of moment. President Bush, congressional leaders and Pentagon brass gathered at the National Cathedral a few days after the attacks to pray for God's assistance in the smiting of our enemies. As they stood to leave, the pipe organ roared out "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" -- which, you may remember, is not exactly a pastoral. Some fateful lightning was about to be loosed from our terrible, swift sword.

And indeed there has been lightning in distant places around the world. Closer to home, however, the response has been less martial than monetary. Military recruitment is down, not up. Rather than meet any hardship, we have loosed the fateful charge cards of America's fat wallet.

Which makes a certain brand of sense: A basic doctrine of war says to mass your strength against your enemy's weakness, and the United States has no more tangible, flexible strength than its economy. It's no coincidence that, among the five living former secretaries of defense since 1977, four have become financiers (the other is vice president). Our money and our muscle are strategically meshed. Experts can argue about the long-term vitality of America's money muscle, given our outsourced jobs, sagging industrial base, looming old-age crisis and national debt. But for the time being, U.S. cash flow remains awesome. The federal government is the world's largest consumer of goods and services. The United States produces more buying power each year than the 25 European Union nations combined, though Europe has 160 million more people. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, we produce more than 20 percent of the world's dough. Faced with a crisis, our leaders did what they know best. They started shoveling money.

It's impossible to say precisely how much the U.S. government has spent in response to 9/11. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- better known as the 9/11 Commission -- noted in 2004 that the country's defense and security spending was escalating more steeply than at any time in the past 50 years. This money is contained in thousands of budget items, some of which are misleading, others of which are classified. We can see the tips of some icebergs, though. According to the Congressional Budget Office, funding specifically for homeland security, one small part of the overall security spending spree, more than doubled in the first two years after the attacks, from $20 billion to more than $40 billion. Some federal spending is an obvious response to Osama bin Laden, such as the billions to fortify federal office buildings and update government computer networks. Some comes under less obvious headings, such as the billions in new spending at military hospitals to treat and rehabilitate the wounded soldiers of the Iraq war. Some money remains inside government agencies, such as the billions in new spending at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, funding research into anthrax, smallpox and other germ terrorism. Some of it pours into private companies, especially private companies with big Washington area offices. All told, it's safe to say that hundreds of billions have gushed forth in a torrent of money that has washed across the globe, puddling in pockets from Kandahar to Kansas City. And the great lakes of cash have collected right here in the government's back yard.

"What you see in all the new construction, all the new jobs and so forth, is the benefit the Washington area receives from having a very rich uncle -- you know, Uncle Sam," says Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. "Every quarter, and especially on April 15, we receive an enormous transfer of wealth from the rest of the country."

Fuller is a slim, graying fellow who has built a small empire on his diligent collection and smooth explication of Washington area economic data. He has numbers for everything, usually right at his fingertips, from the size of the federal workforce under Lyndon Johnson to the current growth rate of the dry-cleaning sector. Merchants, developers, politicians and journalists look to Fuller and his PowerPoint slides for illumination of the world outside their windows. Suppose you want to know why the unemployment rate in Northern Virginia has been the lowest in the country for much of the past four years. Fuller has a slide to explain it.

"Government procurement," he summarizes.

Fuller continues. "In Fairfax County, federal procurement amounted to $16 billion last year alone." That is the richest windfall in America, by far -- roughly 10 times as much, per capita, as the government doled out for goods and services in Los Angeles, for example. "Procurement" does not describe all government spending, just the goods the government buys and the outside work it commissions. So that $16 billion, while huge, doesn't include the salaries of government workers, who are legion in Fairfax and throughout the Washington region. Nor does it include the rent the government pays for office space, even though the feds and their contractors are this area's biggest tenants, by far. Since 9/11, the Washington region has boasted the strongest commercial real estate market in America, with low vacancy rates producing rents second only to New York City.

All these spending streams flow into the region, but procurement spending "is something far more potent," Fuller says. "We've found that procurement dollars have twice as much impact in the economy as government payroll dollars. The money churns more through the economy. There's a bigger bang for the buck."

That bang is reflected in the huge new houses with the two-story foyers, in the fancy late-model cars, in the oversubscribed private schools, and, most of all, in the chain of construction cranes sited in the past few years from the Pentagon to past Dulles International Airport. In terms perfectly chosen for the prosperous citizens of Northern Virginia, Fuller compares this stretch to a high-class galleria, with the Defense Department and the airport as the anchor stores. "The Pentagon is like Neiman Marcus," he says, "and Dulles is like Nordstrom." Between them lies a long line of upscale boutiques doing record business -- weapons contractors, management consultants, data processing giants, communications providers, information technology firms. Big names, such as Accenture, BearingPoint, Computer Sciences Corp., General Dynamics, Titan, Oracle, Raytheon and SAIC. Countless smaller contractors as well. These companies are selling everything from missiles to disaster-modeling software to computer integration at the Department of Homeland Security.

Northern Virginia has prospered the most, but don't cry for Maryland or the District. According to another of Fuller's slides, federal procurement spending has been frenzied there, too. From 2003 to 2004, to focus on a single year, federal contracting increased 16 percent in the District and 19 percent in the Maryland suburbs.