WEDNESDAY 21 OCTOBER 2009
Cashing in the War Dividend: The Joys of Perpetual War
Tuesday 20 October 2009
by: Jo Comerford | TomDispatch.com
In the next decade the basic Pentagon budget will grow by at least
$133.1 billion, or 25%.
So you thought the Pentagon was already big enough? Well, what
do you know, especially with the price of the American military
slated to grow by at least 25% over the next decade?
Forget about the butter. It's bad for you anyway. And sheer
military power, as well as the money behind it, assures the country
of a thick waistline without the cholesterol. So, let's sing the
praises of perpetual war. We better, since right now every forecast
in sight tells us that it's our future.
The tired peace dividend tug boat left the harbor two decades
ago, dragging with it laughable hopes for universal health care and
decent public education. Now, the mighty USS War Dividend is
preparing to set sail. The economic weather reports may be lousy and
the seas choppy, but one thing is guaranteed: that won't stop it.
The United States, of course, long ago captured first prize in
the global arms race. It now spends as much as the next 14 countries
combined, even as the spending of our rogue enemies and former
enemies -- Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria -- much
in the headlines for their prospective armaments, makes up a mere 1%
of the world military budget. Still, when you're a military
superpower focused on big-picture thinking, there's no time to dawdle
on the details.
And be reasonable, who could expect the U.S. to fight two wars
and maintain more than 700 bases around the world for less than the
$704 billion we'll shell out to the Pentagon in 2010? But here's what
few Americans grasp and you aren't going to read about in your local
paper either: according to Department of Defense projections, the
baseline military budget -- just the bare bones, not those billions
in war-fighting extras -- is projected to increase by 2.5% each year
for the next 10 years. In other words, in the next decade the basic
Pentagon budget will grow by at least $133.1 billion, or 25%.
When it comes to the health of the war dividend in economically
bad times, if that's not good news, what is? As anyone at the
Pentagon will be quick to tell you, it's a real bargain, a steal, at
least compared to the two-term presidency of George W. Bush. Then,
that same baseline defense budget grew by an astonishing 38%.
If the message isn't already clear enough, let me summarize:
it's time for the Departments of Housing and Urban Development,
Transportation, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, and
Veterans Affairs to suck it up. After all, Americans, however
unemployed, foreclosed, or unmedicated, will only be truly secure if
the Pentagon is exceedingly well fed. According to the Office of
Management and Budget, what that actually means is this: 55% of next
year's discretionary spending -- that is, the spending negotiated by
the President and Congress -- will go to the military just to keep it
chugging along.
The 14 million American children in poverty, the millions of
citizens who will remain without health insurance (even if some
version of the Baucus plan is passed), the 7.6 million people who
have lost jobs since 2007, all of them will have to take a number.
The same is true of the kinds of projects needed to improve the
country's disintegrating infrastructure, including the 25% of U.S.
drinking water that was given a barely passing "D" by the American
Society of Civil Engineers in a 2009 study.
And don't imagine that this is a terrible thing either! There's
no shame in paying $400 for every gallon of gas used in Afghanistan,
especially when the Marines alone are reported to consume 800,000
gallons of it each day. After all, the evidence is in: a few whiners
aside, Americans want our tax dollars used this way. Otherwise we'd
complain, and no one makes much of a fuss about war or the ever-
rising numbers of dollars going to it anymore.
$915.1 billion in total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending to
date has been a no-brainer, even if it could, theoretically, have
been traded in for the annual salaries of 15 million teachers or 20
million police officers or for 171 million Pell Grants of
approximately $5,350 each for use by American college and university
students.
Next March, we will collectively reach a landmark in this new
version of the American way of life. We will hit the $1 trillion mark
in total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending with untold years of war-
making to go. No problem. It's only the proposed nearly $900 billion
for a decade of health care that we fear will do us in.
Nor is it the Pentagon's fault that U.S. states have laws
prohibiting them from deficit spending. The 48 governors and state
legislatures now struggling with budget deficits should stop
complaining and simply be grateful for their ever smaller slices of
the federal pie. Between 2001 and 2008, federal grant funding for
state and local governments lagged behind the 28% growth of the
federal budget by 14%, while military spending outpaced federal
budget growth with a 41% increase. There is every reason to believe
that this is a trend, not an anomaly, which means that Title 1, Head
Start, Community Development Block Grants, and the Children's Health
Insurance Program will just have to make do with less. In fact, if
you want a true measure of what's important to our nation, think of
it this way: if you add together the total 2010 budgets of all those
48 states in deficit, they won't even equal projected U.S. military
spending for the same year.
Take the situation of Massachusetts, for example. Yankee spirit
or not, that state will see a 17.3% decrease in federal grants in
2010 no matter how hard Governor Deval Patrick wrings his hands. True
to the American way, Patrick's projected $5 billion fiscal year 2010
deficit will be his problem and his alone, as is his state's recently-
announced $600 million budget shortfall for 2009. Blame it on
declining tax revenue and the economic crisis, on things that are
beyond his control. No matter, Patrick will have to make deep cuts to
elderly mental health services and disabled home-care programs, and
lose large chunks of funding for universal pre-kindergarten, teacher
training, gifted and talented programs in the schools, and so much more.
Still, that Commonwealth's politicians are clearly out of step
with the country. On October 9, 2009, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino
joined with Congressman Barney Frank in calling on President Obama to
find extra money for such programs by reducing military spending 25%.
President Obama, cover your ears! Menino, who actually believes that
a jump in military spending contributed to "significantly raising the
federal deficit and lowering our economic security," asked the
federal government to be a better partner to Boston by reinvesting in
its schools, public housing, transportation, and job-training
programs, especially for young people. Of course, this is delusional,
as any Pentagon budgeteer could tell you. This isn't some Head Start
playground, after all, it's the battlefield of American life. Tough
it out, Menino.
One principle has, by now, come to dominate our American world,
even if nobody seems to notice: do whatever it takes to keep federal
dollars flowing for weapons systems (and the wars that go with them).
And don't count on the Pentagon to lend a hand by having a bake sale
any time soon; don't expect it to voluntarily cut back on major
weapons systems without finding others to take their place. If, as a
result, our children are less likely to earn high school and college
diplomas than we were, that's what prisons and the Marines are for.
So let's break a bottle of champagne -- or, if the money comes
out of a state budget, Coke -- on the bow of the USS War Dividend!
And send it off on its next voyage without an iceberg in sight. Let
the corks pop. Let the bubbly drown out that Harvard University
report indicating that 45,000 deaths last year were due to a lack of
health insurance.
Hip hip...
--------
Jo Comerford is the executive director of the National
Priorities Project. Previously, she served as director of programs at
the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and directed the American
Friends Service Committee's justice and peace-related community
organizing efforts in western Massachusetts.
[Note on sources: For more information and many of the figures
on defense spending in this piece, see the National Priorities
Project's Security Spending Primer: Getting Smart About The Pentagon
Budget, which can be found at the top of the project's website. The
Primer answers the most frequently asked questions about, and
supplies the most commonly requested information on, the Pentagon
budget and U.S. military spending. Note also that Jo Comerford can be
seen in Robert Greenwald's striking new film Rethink Afghanistan.]
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