November 07, 2007

How Much is Enough? (for the military)

That is the question posed by Frida Berrigan, in her article on military spending: "Once upon a time, people researched and wrote reports about lower defense spending and converting the military-industrial complex into a peacetime economy... These reports read not just like they are 15 years old. They read like dispatches from a remote and almost unimaginable planet.."

"Converting the Cold War Economy, published in 1993 by the Economic Policy Institute, began with the premise that President George H. W. Bush’s $281 billion budgets could be halved over the next decade. The report proposed even bolder actions: 'Deeper cuts resulting in budgets as low as $67 billion a year are conceivable if the U.S. were to defer preparations for unilateral action in favor of a cooperative approach to security based at the United Nations and if arms sales by the major industrialized countries to the Third World were stopped.'

What a difference 15 years makes! The Pentagon lost $13 billion alone in the sofa cracks last year. The Government Accountability Office put the price of Pentagon accounting problems at $13 billion in 2005.

For fiscal year 2008, we are looking at a "base military budget” of $520 billion and another $127.5 billion in war spending, which means that total military spending will hit $647.5 billion. The Bush administration has presided over one of the largest military buildups in the history of the United States. $647 billion is a lot of money. After adjusting for inflation, it represents the highest level of military spending since World War II..."

read full article here