Cut the Military Budget--II

By Barney Frank
This article appeared in the March 2, 2009 edition of The Nation.
February 11, 2009

I am a great believer in freedom of expression and am proud of those times when I have been one of a few members of Congress to oppose censorship. I still hold close to an absolutist position, but I have been tempted recently to make an exception, not by banning speech but by requiring it. I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending.

Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good. Obviously people should be concerned about the $700 billion Congress voted for this past fall to deal with the credit crisis. But even if none of that money were to be paid back--and most of it will be--it would involve a smaller drain on taxpayer dollars than the Iraq War will have cost us by the time it is concluded, and it is roughly equivalent to the $651 billion we will spend on all defense in this fiscal year.

When I am challenged by people--not all of them conservative--who tell me that they agree, for example, that we should enact comprehensive universal healthcare but wonder how to pay for it, my answer is that I do not know immediately where to get the funding but I know whom I should ask. I was in Congress on September 10, 2001, and I know there was no money in the budget at that time for a war in Iraq. So my answer is that I will go to the people who found the money for that war and ask them if they could find some for healthcare.

It is particularly inexplicable that so many self-styled moderates ignore the extraordinary increase in military spending. After all, George W. Bush himself has acknowledged its importance. As the December 20 Wall Street Journal notes, "The president remains adamant his budget troubles were the result of a ramp-up in defense spending." Bush then ends this rare burst of intellectual honesty by blaming all this "ramp-up" on the need to fight the war in Iraq.

(More here.)

TM Comment, from The Nation website:

Barney Frank is almost apologetic about what is an eminently sensible solution.

Maybe he needs to review the figures. The US spends more on national security than the rest of the world combined:
• The FY '08 DOD budget was $653 billion. That doesn't include the Iraq spending, which was done entirely through "emergency supplementals," another $200 billion;
• $23 billion in the DOE budget for nuclear weapons;
•$25 billion for foreign military assistance to State;
•$75 billion for veterans' assistance;
•$38 billion to Treasury for military retirement;
•$2 billion to Justice for FBI paramilitary activities;
•$64 billion to the Department of Homeland Security;
•$45-50 billion to the intelligence community;
•$7-8 billion for NASA's military activities;
•interest on the military portion of the national debt, which includes at least $200 billion per year.

The $52 billion spent on nuclear weapons (DOD +DOE) in 2008 is almost double what the US allots to general science, space and technology, and fourteen times what DOE spends on alternative energy R&D.

Does all this make us safer? How many more bombers or fighters would it have taken to prevent 9/11? Is there a sufficient number of ships and aircraft carriers that can prevent another 9/11? How many sailors, soldiers, and marines will it take to prevent another 9/11?

Instead, ask the question, How are we going to power the grid and supply fuel for transportation in the future? Do we really face a terrorist/security risk greater than the rest of the world combined, and greater than the certainty of petroleum shortages in the future?

Tom Maertens
Mankato, MN
02/13/2009 @ 09:23am