"An Indefensible Budget"
If a half-trillion dollar military budget lands on Capitol Hill and no one seems to hear, does it make a sound? You bet.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - May-June issue - By John Isaacs
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION RECENTLY REQUESTED MORE than $500 billion in military spending, and few in Congress, the media, or the public have paid much attention. That's worth repeating: half a trillion dollars. Liberals are largely silent about the Pentagon budget because of the futility of opposing military spending during wartime. Fiscal conservatives are quiet because they would rather go after Medicaid spending or Social Security. Pentagon hawks speak up only to ask for more money for "shortchanged" programs.
The formal defense budget request-including Energy Department spending for military programs-totals $439 billion. That sum alone, according to an analysis prepared by the Senate Budget Committee's Democratic staff, is roughly 18 percent higher in real terms than the average Cold War defense budget. To put it another way, although U.S. troop strength is one-third smaller today, the Pentagon is spending more to build and maintain a military to confront poorly armed insurgents, like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, than it did during the long struggle with the imperial Soviet superpower.
Even the $439 billion total lowballs defense the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-an average of more than $5 billion a month. Also left out were the costs of adding 33,000 military personnel to the army and marines worldwide, which Congress authorized last year, and $5 billion to reorganize the army into smaller brigades. The army pulled its own accounting trick, moving program requests that should have been in the $439 billion budget to a separate spending request sent to Congress around the same time. All told, this shell game tacks on an additional $75 billion to defense spending.
This supplemental request is technically slated to be used in fiscal 2005 and the $439 billion in fiscal 2006, but even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concedes that "we need to look at the budget and the supplemental together." Add up all of these items and presto, a $514 billion budget request.
While Rumsfeld talks about transforming the military to confront the challenges of the twenty-first century, the $514 billion budget is chock-full of programs that have no relevance to Saddam Hussein's heirs or to Osama bin Laden. For example, the budget includes $8.8 billion for missile defense-the largest single weapons request. Yet national missile defense, a significant portion of that $8.8 billion, has failed its two most recent tests, and Rumsfeld admitted at a February 17 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that, "There's no deterrent if something is known to not work."
The budget also includes: $4.3 billion for the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet that was designed to fight the Soviet Air Force and is slated to be discontinued in fiscal 2008; $2.6 billion for submarines that will be great at tracking and sinking Soviet naval vessels, should any be found outside movie lots; and $1 billion for another Cold War weapon, the Trident II D5 missile. Not to disappoint the new nuke crowd, the proposed budget funds continued research on a new generation of "bunker-busting" nuclear weapons.
Half a trillion dollars may sound like a lot, but not to some members of Congress. "We're not spending enough on defense," says Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. Not to be outdone, superhawk Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, added, "I essentially want to agree with [Inhofe], . . . we are, in this budget, underinvesting in our future." The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Missouri's Ike Skelton, spoke of $13.8 billion in "unfunded requirements" from each of the services' wish lists of programs.
Others seem most determined to protect military jobs in their states. At the February 17 hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia protested a shortage of new ships in the budget, ships that might just happen to be produced in the Old Dominion. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican representing another ship-building state, Maine, raised the specter of an expanding Chinese fleet to hammer home the point: "The decreasing number of ships being procured, particularly in light of the Chinese buildup, really concerns me."
Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, complained about the possibility that an aircraft carrier based in his state could be retired. Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss appeared most concerned about the paucity of orders for new airplanes built in the Peach State, particularly the F/A-22 fighter and the C-130J cargo aircraft. He rather self-consciously defended his plaint: "I have been a fiscal conservative, have been supportive of balancing the budget ever since I got into the political game . . . but there are some things that don't have a price tag on them and we all know that freedom is one of them."
Meanwhile, as senators pined about the price of freedom being marked down, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deficit stands at $394 billion for fiscal year 2005 and about $370 billion for fiscal year 2006. The administration purports to cope with these deficits by cutting funding for domestic discretionary programs by $212 billion during the next five years and for entitlements, such as Medicaid, by $138 billion during the next 10 years.
Liberals will try to protect domestic social programs from the meat axe. And they have much to defend, including cuts in low-income home heating assistance, clean water funding, community housing programs, and Amtrak. But don't expect to see any funds moved from the defense budget to help augment these programs, despite the country's worsening fiscal condition. The war in Iraq is the gift that keeps on taking, with analysts expecting continued heavy expenditures for years to come. Meanwhile, President George W. Bush is proposing expanded tax cuts that will worsen the deficit.
The public won't know the final military price tag for months, as the budget goes through its many stages in Congress: the budget resolution, the supplemental appropriations request, the defense authorization bill, and the defense appropriations bill. But you can bet half a trillion dollars that the requested amount will not decline. Instead, Congress will likely use budget gimmicks to fund pork barrel projects. As high as the defense budget is, expect it to climb still higher next year, perpetuating a nasty cycle.
John Isaacs, a member of the Bulletin's editorial advisory board, is the executive director of the Council for a Livable World in Washington, D.C. and a National Board Member of Americans for Democratic Action.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - May-June issue - By John Isaacs
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION RECENTLY REQUESTED MORE than $500 billion in military spending, and few in Congress, the media, or the public have paid much attention. That's worth repeating: half a trillion dollars. Liberals are largely silent about the Pentagon budget because of the futility of opposing military spending during wartime. Fiscal conservatives are quiet because they would rather go after Medicaid spending or Social Security. Pentagon hawks speak up only to ask for more money for "shortchanged" programs.
The formal defense budget request-including Energy Department spending for military programs-totals $439 billion. That sum alone, according to an analysis prepared by the Senate Budget Committee's Democratic staff, is roughly 18 percent higher in real terms than the average Cold War defense budget. To put it another way, although U.S. troop strength is one-third smaller today, the Pentagon is spending more to build and maintain a military to confront poorly armed insurgents, like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, than it did during the long struggle with the imperial Soviet superpower.
Even the $439 billion total lowballs defense the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-an average of more than $5 billion a month. Also left out were the costs of adding 33,000 military personnel to the army and marines worldwide, which Congress authorized last year, and $5 billion to reorganize the army into smaller brigades. The army pulled its own accounting trick, moving program requests that should have been in the $439 billion budget to a separate spending request sent to Congress around the same time. All told, this shell game tacks on an additional $75 billion to defense spending.
This supplemental request is technically slated to be used in fiscal 2005 and the $439 billion in fiscal 2006, but even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concedes that "we need to look at the budget and the supplemental together." Add up all of these items and presto, a $514 billion budget request.
While Rumsfeld talks about transforming the military to confront the challenges of the twenty-first century, the $514 billion budget is chock-full of programs that have no relevance to Saddam Hussein's heirs or to Osama bin Laden. For example, the budget includes $8.8 billion for missile defense-the largest single weapons request. Yet national missile defense, a significant portion of that $8.8 billion, has failed its two most recent tests, and Rumsfeld admitted at a February 17 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that, "There's no deterrent if something is known to not work."
The budget also includes: $4.3 billion for the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet that was designed to fight the Soviet Air Force and is slated to be discontinued in fiscal 2008; $2.6 billion for submarines that will be great at tracking and sinking Soviet naval vessels, should any be found outside movie lots; and $1 billion for another Cold War weapon, the Trident II D5 missile. Not to disappoint the new nuke crowd, the proposed budget funds continued research on a new generation of "bunker-busting" nuclear weapons.
Half a trillion dollars may sound like a lot, but not to some members of Congress. "We're not spending enough on defense," says Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. Not to be outdone, superhawk Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, added, "I essentially want to agree with [Inhofe], . . . we are, in this budget, underinvesting in our future." The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Missouri's Ike Skelton, spoke of $13.8 billion in "unfunded requirements" from each of the services' wish lists of programs.
Others seem most determined to protect military jobs in their states. At the February 17 hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia protested a shortage of new ships in the budget, ships that might just happen to be produced in the Old Dominion. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican representing another ship-building state, Maine, raised the specter of an expanding Chinese fleet to hammer home the point: "The decreasing number of ships being procured, particularly in light of the Chinese buildup, really concerns me."
Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, complained about the possibility that an aircraft carrier based in his state could be retired. Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss appeared most concerned about the paucity of orders for new airplanes built in the Peach State, particularly the F/A-22 fighter and the C-130J cargo aircraft. He rather self-consciously defended his plaint: "I have been a fiscal conservative, have been supportive of balancing the budget ever since I got into the political game . . . but there are some things that don't have a price tag on them and we all know that freedom is one of them."
Meanwhile, as senators pined about the price of freedom being marked down, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deficit stands at $394 billion for fiscal year 2005 and about $370 billion for fiscal year 2006. The administration purports to cope with these deficits by cutting funding for domestic discretionary programs by $212 billion during the next five years and for entitlements, such as Medicaid, by $138 billion during the next 10 years.
Liberals will try to protect domestic social programs from the meat axe. And they have much to defend, including cuts in low-income home heating assistance, clean water funding, community housing programs, and Amtrak. But don't expect to see any funds moved from the defense budget to help augment these programs, despite the country's worsening fiscal condition. The war in Iraq is the gift that keeps on taking, with analysts expecting continued heavy expenditures for years to come. Meanwhile, President George W. Bush is proposing expanded tax cuts that will worsen the deficit.
The public won't know the final military price tag for months, as the budget goes through its many stages in Congress: the budget resolution, the supplemental appropriations request, the defense authorization bill, and the defense appropriations bill. But you can bet half a trillion dollars that the requested amount will not decline. Instead, Congress will likely use budget gimmicks to fund pork barrel projects. As high as the defense budget is, expect it to climb still higher next year, perpetuating a nasty cycle.
John Isaacs, a member of the Bulletin's editorial advisory board, is the executive director of the Council for a Livable World in Washington, D.C. and a National Board Member of Americans for Democratic Action.
1 Comments:
James Inhofe, R-OK was part of the very powerful Oklahoma delegation that included Nickles, Watts, Keating, Glover.
They put their little minds together and deemed it their mission to leave a legacy for southwestern Oklahoma to get the (originally)United Defense Crusader and now the BAE Systems NLOS canon at Elgin for Lawton/Fort Sill. For without the military, there is nothing here. They wrote new laws, championed tax exemptions and passed right-to-work all by every under handed method they could find.
Elgin is hoping to get infrastructure in-place for an industrial park before it all falls apart and federal and state budgets are being written to accomodate this. Talk about pork-barrell and you talk about politics.
In Oklahoma, there is no such thing as representation anymore unless you have big bucks - everyone has their hands hidden in the cookie jar.
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