CURRENT UPDATES: February 7, 2007

Largest Military Budget Since WWII

Dear Friends,

In the last few weeks, we have lost Molly Ivins and Father Robert Drinan... to say we will miss these two tireless advocates of peace and justice is a huge understatement.

Drinan, a Jesuit priest, professor and former member of Congress, died on January 27th as tens of thousands of protesters filled Washington with their outrage at war. He was 86.

Molly Ivins-- witty columnist, serious muck-raker-- died on January 31st after a long struggle with breast cancer. Eulogized by Maya Angelou, Amy Goodman and countless others, her last column contains a recipe for action all of us can heed: "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there...." (http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0111-31.htm)

Speaking of ridiculous: The war on terror as a hunt for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. A cash prize to "solve" global warming. Fashion week in New York. In this issue of the ATRC E-Update, we look at the ridiculous size of the United States military budget.

Have a good weekend,
Bill Hartung
Frida Berrigan

BUSH PROPOSES LARGEST MILITARY BUDGET SINCE WORLD WAR II
William D. Hartung, World Policy Institute

Even by Bush administration standards, the military spending proposal for Fiscal Year 2008 - the budget year beginning on October 1, 2007 -- is enormous. The request for the “regular” military budget, which includes Pentagon spending plus work on nuclear warheads and naval reactors at the Department of Energy, was $499 billion. This represents a $46 billion increase from the current budget year.
Figures for the regular military budget exclude the costs of the current wars that the United States is engaged in. A proposed supplemental appropriation to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq of $141.7 billion brings proposed military spending for FY 2008 to $647.2 billion, the highest level of military spending since the end of World War II - higher than Vietnam, higher than Korea, higher than the peak of the Reagan buildup. There will also be a proposed supplemental of $93.4 billion added to this year’s (FY 2007) budget, bringing the total for the year to $622.4 billion.

This spending spree comes at a time when America’s main enemy is not a rival superpower like the Soviet Union, but a network of terrorist groups armed primarily with explosives, shoulder-fired missiles, and AK-47s. And even if one accepts the “need” to fight a war like the current US occupation of Iraq, there are tens of billions of dollars in the administration’s budget proposal that will never be used in that conflict. Requests for systems like the F-22 fighter ($4.6 billion), the V-22 Osprey ($2.6 billion), the CVN-21 aircraft carrier ($3.1 billion), the SSN-774 Virginia attack submarine ($2.7 billion), the Trident D-5 Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile ($1.2 billion), and Ballistic Missile Defense ($10.8 billion) are just a few examples of weapons that are unnecessary, unworkable, or both.

What do all these figures mean? How can the average person make sense of these billions and billions and billions of dollars? Some comparisons may be helpful.

Proposed U.S. military spending for FY 2008 is larger than military spending by all of the other nations in the world combined.

At $141.7 billion, this year’s proposed spending on the Iraq war is larger than the military budgets of China and Russia combined. Total U.S. military spending for FY2008 is roughly ten times the military budget of the second largest military spending country in the world, China.

Journalist Jim Lobe of the Interpress Service notes that proposed U.S. military spending is larger than the combined gross domestic products (GDP) of all 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The FY 2008 military budget proposal is more than 30 times higher than all spending on State Department operations and non-military foreign aid combined.

The FY 2008 military budget is over 120 times higher than the roughly $5 billion per year the U.S. government spends on combating global warming.

FY 2008 military spending represents 58 cents out of every dollar spent by the U.S. government on discretionary programs - the items that Congress gets to vote up or down on an annual basis. This means that military spending is more than the combined totals of spending on education, environmental protection, administration of justice, veteran’s benefits, housing assistance, transportation, job training, agriculture, energy, and economic development.

As the poverty rate continues to climb, the FY 2008 budget proposes cuts of $13 billion in non-military related discretionary spending, including cuts of $1.4 billion from the Community Development Block Grant; $436 million from Head Start; $1.1 billion from the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program; $669 million from Special Education; and $111 million from the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

Feel free to send us your own ideas about how to describe the size - and impact - of military spending levels. Educating the broader public on this issue will depend in significant part on whether we can find comparisons that make these massive numbers real to people.

One last point -- despite spending these huge sums on the military, the situation in Iraq is getting worse by the day, and U.S. troops are taking greater and greater risks as a result of shortages of equipment and training and reductions in down time between deployments. For a big picture look at the impacts of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the U.S. military, see a new report by David Isenberg on “Budgeting for Empire” (details below).

Resources:

David Isenberg, “Budgeting for Empire: The Effect of Iran and Afghanistan on Military Forces, Budgets, and Plans.” Independent Institute, January 30, 2007, available at www.independent.org.

Jim Lobe, “Proposed ’08 Budget Earns Superlatives All Around,” February 7, 2007, available at www.antiwar.com.

Christopher Hellman, “Highlights of the Fiscal Year 2008 Pentagon Spending Request,” February 5, 2007, available at www.armscontrolcenter.org.

Steven M. Kosiak, “Both DoD Base and War Budgets Receive Big Boosts, Total Funding at Highest Level Since the End of World War II,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, February 5, 2007, available at www.csbaonline.org.

Winslow Wheeler, “The 2008 National Security Budget and Briefing Slides,” Straus Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information, February 6, 2007, available at www.cdi.org.

National Priorities Project, “The President’s Budget: Impact on the States,” February 5, 2007, available at www.nationalpriorities.org.

Sharon Parrott and Matt Fielder, “President’s Budget Calls for Deep Cuts in a Wide Range of Domestic Programs: Cuts Start in 2008 and Grow Deeper Over Time,” available at www.cbpp.org.