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By Matt Holland
Last Updated: October 26, 2009
Let's suppose you are a typical family and you're managing your monthly budget. The average American family spends $1,100 on housing, $600 on transportation, $450 on food, and $200 on health care.
And let's say on top of these typical expenses you're paying $1,400 to maintain the Army tank you keep in your back yard. You don't really need the tank. You never drive the tank. And the $16,800 you're paying a year to maintain the tank you don't need and never drive is sapping your family's financial future, threatening everything from your ability to pay for your children's college education, to meeting health care expenses, to saving for the future.
Welcome to the federal budget. This year, of the money that Congress and the president choose to spend—often called the discretionary budget—just over half, or about $693 billion, will go to the military. By comparison, $59 billion will be spent on education; $50 billion on children's health insurance; and $8 billion on the Environmental Protection Agency. And the $693 billion on military spending doesn't even include money spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Our military spending dwarfs that of Russia, which is no longer a Cold War rival. And it squashes the military budget of China, which is now a major trading partner. In fact, our military budget is equal to the combined military budgets of the next 15 countries behind us.
To be sure, unlike that tank in your back yard, a lot of this spending is necessary. We live in a dangerous era and there are those who would do us harm. And we have responsibilities to allies around the world. But to quote former President Dwight Eisenhower, the former Supreme Allied Commander of World War II: We must not pay one cent for defense more than we have to.
But what constitutes wasteful Pentagon spending? Here are some prime—and expensive—examples:
The F-22 Raptor Fighter Jet. The Air Force itself no longer favors continued production of the F-22, and both President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates oppose it. The jet was designed for defense against the old Soviet Union, but has never flown in combat. Each jet costs $339 million.
Missile defense. We've spent $150 billion on missile defense since former President Ronald Reagan gave his famous "Star Wars" defense speech. Technology has changed since then, and the types of systems we've been developing don't work. Rather than throw good money after bad, we should invest in research to determine whether missile defense is even feasible and if so, what kinds of systems should be developed.
The C-17 cargo plane. We already have 205 C-17 cargo planes available or on order. This program was scheduled to end in 2009, but was continued after intense lobbying by Boeing, the manufacturer. Just this month, Congressional leaders authorized $2.5 billion for eight more.
This is only the tip of the iceberg—we're spending billions and billions of dollars every year on unnecessary and obsolete weapons systems that do nothing to make our nation more secure, yet saddle generations to come with mountains of debt.
Why? Campaign largesse. The 18 lawmakers who serve on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense last year inserted more than $335 million in earmarks into the defense spending bill on behalf of their campaign contributors. Those contributors donated $1.3 million to members who sponsored their earmarks.
The good news is we now have a president and a defense secretary who are willing to stand up to unscrupulous defense contractors and those who would do their bidding. Obama and Gates have brought common sense to military spending, proposing the elimination of programs that don't work or are obsolete and allocating resources to adapt to modern welfare.
This fresh approach will free up resources for other areas of the budget, such as health care, education, energy independence, and various urgent needs. It's time we demand that Congress act responsibility and trim the pork from the military budget.
Matt Holland is director of TrueMajority.org, the online department of USAction.
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