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No Matter Who Wins in November, Increased Military Spending Will Follow
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by Polly Mann, W A M M
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When asked about military spending as a percentage of overall government spending, I usually specify that the figures I quote represent the portion of the federal budget that the Congress can spend, excluding allotments for ongoing programs. For 2009 that percentage will be 54 percent, or $515 billion of the total budget of one trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000), approaching the military spending level of World War II. These figures are from the Analytical Perspectives book of the U.S. government, Fiscal Year 2009. (Google cites a figure of $585 billion for the military budget.) Government charts include trust funds such as Social Security, Medicare, etc., which brings the military percentage down to 20%. The government practice of combining trust funds and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion seem smaller.
My basic sources for these figures are generally three: the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL); the War Resisters League; and the newsletter of the Center for Defense Information, the Defense Monitor. The White House says the military budget has grown by 70 percent since President Bush took office, but FCNL calculates that the increase may be closer to 100 percent. And as if that isn’t bad enough, all the major presidential candidates (except for Ron Paul, who is not a serious contender for the Republican nomination) want to increase the size of the military.
Overall, the budget proposal for fiscal year 2009 cuts discretionary domestic programs not related to security by $2.4 billion, resulting in drastic cuts in services. Eventually the Congress will make the final decision. If the Congress’s past actions are any indication of the future, it will give the president the go-ahead, with only minor revisions.
The Washington Post of February 2, 2008 quotes Loren Thompson of the private Lexington Institute, a research group with close ties to the Pentagon and industry, who said military procurement in Bush’s baseline budget request will surge to $111 billion in fiscal 2009 from $98 billion in 2008. The administration has already said it will seek even more procurement funding in a supplemental request, including money for four Lockheed F-22 fighter jets. The article goes on to say: “Rising costs of fuel, health care, fighter jets, warships and other big-ticket items are seen inflating Bush’s 2009 military plan, boosting top contractors headed by Lockheed Martin Corp, then Boeing, Northrop Grumman Corp, General Dynamics Corp and Raytheon Co.”
It will be more than interesting, fascinating, maybe horrifying, to see if any decreases will be made in military spending with a new administration. With the present slate of candidates it doesn’t look promising.
Judge for yourself—read the following excerpts from the policy papers of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the democratic presidential candidates. You can read their positions in their entirety, posted on the candidates’ official campaign websites, from which this information was taken.
Barack Obama’s position:
Expand the Military: We have learned from Iraq that our military needs more men and women in uniform to reduce the strain on our active force. Obama will increase the size of ground forces, adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.
New Capabilities: Obama will give our troops new equipment, armor, training, and skills such as language training. He will also strengthen our civilian capacity, so that our civilian agencies have the critical skills and equipment they need to integrate their efforts with our military.
Ensure a Strong U.S.-Israel Partnership: Barack Obama strongly supports the U.S.-Israel relationship, believes that our first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel, America’s strongest ally in the Middle East. Obama supports this closeness, stating that the United States would never distance itself from Israel.
Hillary Clinton’s position:
“To help our forces recover from Iraq and prepare them to confront the full range of twenty-first-century threats, I will work to expand and modernize the military so that fighting wars no longer comes at the expense of deployments for long-term deterrence, military readiness, or responses to urgent needs at home.
“Moreover, the next administration will have to confront an unpredictable and dangerous situation in the Middle East that threatens Israel and could potentially bring down the global economy by disrupting oil supplies.
“To meet these challenges, we will have to replenish American power by getting out of Iraq, rebuilding our military, and developing a much broader arsenal of tools in the fight against terrorism. We must learn once again to draw on all aspects of American power, to inspire and attract as much as to coerce.
“ [We must] use our military not as the solution to every problem but as one element in a comprehensive strategy. As president, I will never hesitate to use force to protect Americans or to defend our territory and our vital interests.” |
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Caribbean Justice Resources
Life and Debt
Video available from W A M M!
Many W A M M members have found the video Life and Debt helpful in understanding what is happening in Haiti, the Caribbean, and throughout the world.
“Utilizing excerpts from the award-winning nonfiction text, A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid, Life and Debt is a woven tapestry of sequences focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas.
“By combining traditional documentary technique with a stylized narrative framework, the complexity of international lending, structural adjustment policies, and free trade will be understood in the context of the day-to-day realities of the people whose lives they impact.”
To purchase your copy of Life and Debt, contact the W A M M office
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© 2008 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete March 2008 Index - click here
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