President Obama has announced a "domestic" spending freeze for the FY 2011 budget. The plans don't include cutting the military one red cent.
Now, anyone that knows anything about the budget knows that the military is the place that 1) we spend tons of money, 2) there is very little accountability and oversight, and 3) military contractors lobby heavily to ensure that both items 1 and 2 continue as is into the foreseeable future. The wars begun by Bush II in his idiotic play at preemptive war, imperialism, colonialism and nationmaker all rolled into one have not only cost us the lives of many men and women but have cost us dearly in terms of national resources. Military contractors--as caught by Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 911--are gleeful; the rest of us should be in mourning until our national lust for warmongering comes to an end.
Is it fair to say that we simply can't cut military spending because the budget includes only necessary items? No way. See OMB Watch, What Makes Defense Spending so Special (discussing Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent on Just in Time for the Discretionary Freeze, New Report Says Defense Spending is Unsustainable (Jan 26, 2010); and Matt Yglesias at Think Progress on The Defense Budget and Political Will (Jan. 26, 2010)).
Ackerman discusses a study by Todd Harrison, Looking Ahead to the FY 2011 Defense Budget (Jan. 2010) that concludes, not surprisingly, that our defense spending is unsustainable--the "direct discoonect between the plans and programs DoD has put forward...and the resources available to support these programs in the long run." Id. (Harrison report). That's what Joe Stiglitz has been telling us for some time--in advising us that the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are much more than the relatively straightforward war supplemental budgets of the Bush years might have led one to believe. According to the Harrison report, we've been spending an average of MORE THAN ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER TROOP per year in Afghanistan, with direct spending on each troop accounting for about $66,000 of that per year. Yet Harrison notes that only 21% ($1.02 trillion) of the total discretionary budget authority of the Department of Defense from FY2000 to FY 2009 ($4.8 trillion) was for those wars. We are, indeed, expanding militarily everywhere--including outer space. ("The decade's fastest growing area of procurement has been space systems, which more than quadrupled from $1.0 billion to $4.6 billion." Id.) Yet the combination of the Bush tax cuts and the Great Recession (caused by the Republican deregulatory regime) has left us with the lowest federal revenues, as a percent of GDP, in more than 50 years. See CBO, Monthly Budget Review (Oct. 7, 2009) (cited by Harrison).
One of the commenters on the Yglesias posts notes that there are relatively simple ways to cut military spending--get our bases out of countries like Germany where we have had them since WWII, combine the Army and Marines, the Navy and Air Force aviation departments so that planes are under the same command as the ground tropps they support, and then keep those remaining corps small.
Meanwhile, of course, Congress has still done very little to help ordinary Americans. Mortgage loans still cannot be modified in bankruptcy, the single most important change that could be made to favor ordinary Americans and force banks to eat some of the swill they've served to the rest of us. Similarly, credit card banks are still raking in huge and unreasonable fees and usurious rates from those they've hoodwinked into using their cards--especially the poorest and most vulnerable amonst us. See Frontline, Secret History of the Credit Card; Frontline, The Card Game (Jan. 26, 2010). The credit card bill that was passed had so many loopholes that the banks have already run trucks through them. (I'm sure my readers have gotten those new "disclosures" that raise the rates and the fees and charge fees in new circumstances, all done to come under the wire before the new rules kick in in 2011.)
So why is it that military contractors and huge banks seem to be protected by administration and congress, while ordinary Americans get shafted? I can't help wondering if it isn't that we--or at least Congress and the Administration--remain profoundly influenced by the Teddy Roosevelt image of carrying a big stick. Maybe it's time to grow up so that we can avoid the kind of huge tax increases that will be necessary to continue funding, even at a lower growth rate, our military empire. If we restrain those expenses, we can use our tax revenues to provide health care for all and jobs programs that create a better living for everyone.
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