The "military industrial complex" was a warning in Eisenhower's farewell speech, a very prescient warning it turns out, that warned between having too close of links between politicians and the companies that make military hardware because it would lead to runaway spending on the military. Prescient because we now do spend nearly half of our discretionary budget on the military, spending more than the next 11 countries combined, and 7 of those are close allies! So you're absolutely right, we need to dramatically cut military spending. If we did so, we could probably balance the budget as you wish, even though doing so means something completely different than the small minded "personal finance" version of such a move would imply.
I guess it depends on your definition of "exclusively" From the Gray Lady Raising the limit used to be a bipartisan nonevent. But, like everything else in Washington over the last 15 years, it has been sucked into the tornado of no-holds-barred politics. In 2006, the Democrats, including then-Senator Joe Biden, refused to support a debt-limit increase by the George W. Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress, as a protest over the Iraq war and tax cuts. and... The budget decision came hours after a separate 52-48 Senate vote to increase the federal debt limit by $781 billion, bringing the debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion. The move left Democrats attacking President George Bush and congressional Republicans for piling up record debt in their years in power. The real problem is that Congress passes legislation for which they have no idea what the real costs will be. They put the spending on auto pilot because they don't have the balls to prioritize their spending.
I suggest everyone read or watch Chas Freeman's lectures on youtube, a great intellect and mild mannered gentleman.
I really hate this whole false equivalency thing. I have to point out that "refusing to support" something when you're in the minority and don't pull a filibuster in the Senate, as was the case with Democrats in 2006 has no impact on the actual payment of U.S. debt or cause any risk of voluntary default. Hypocritical to vote against it? Yes. Does it have any impact? No. This type of inconsequential vote has happened hundreds of times a year since the beginning of the Republic, and in fact members of the out party routinely voted against the debt ceiling increases in the decades before the tea party scorched earth strategy began. Repeatedly filibustering or when in the majority refusing to consider the debt increase to the point that in several cases Treasury stopped paying anything that wasn't technically considered a default, as the GOP did in 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015 when they finally passed a multi-year increase to end the madness for a few years and now in 2021, is another thing completely. And yeah, when one party did something 15 years ago and the other party has done it now 5 times in the same period, it's pretty fair to say, as I did, it is "almost exclusively" done by one party. Even if you ignore the fact that a big chunk of the folks in one party was fine with actually defaulting on our debt and the other was casting a symbolic vote that everyone knew had no impact.
He is a well respected retired diplomat with broad knowledge of U.S. relations with Taiwan, China, and the Middle East. However he is not someone I would turn to on the subject of this thread.