I harp on the doom that the Bush policies have wrought on us a good bit. I am no financial analyst, much less expert, so you can take anything I say as pure observation. But, does it take a money man to figure out that what we have been doing is devastating to our economy… an economy that was built off of our manufacturing base (specifically general industry and the automakers). These financial “geniuses” wanted us to shift our paradigm and become an “information age” and “financial sector” based economy and duped most everyone that it will work.
However, greed kills and it has killed our economy, along with countless citizens here and abroad.
There is one place where they thought some of this will be made up (military sector) and for them, boy are things “booming”:
Let’s take a hard look at defense spending
Few things in life are as predictable as cost overruns on giant new military projects. Except for maybe another big increase in the Pentagon budget.
Both happened recently, and there was little outcry in Washington or along the campaign trail. That’s troubling, given that domestic programs are being squeezed, deficits are growing and lawmakers are clashing over President Bush’s tax cuts.
But nobody tries to talk down defense spending in a time of war, even if the soaring spending isn’t due to the war.
Instead of shrugging off the relentless march of the military industrial complex, how about a clear-eyed assessment of the real threats to the country and some hard calls about what we can afford?
A good place to start would be with the Lightning II joint strike fighter, the most expensive aircraft program ever and the pride of Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth. About 4,000 local Lockheed employees work on the Lightning II, a next-generation fighter that will replace the F-16 for the United States and many allies.
Last week, a government report projected that the price on the Lightning II, also known as the F-35, will grow by $38 billion and that development could take up to 27 months longer than expected. Since development began, in late 2001, the JSF’s price has grown 45 percent, to $337 billion, even while the number of aircraft to be produced has fallen.
The Government Accountability Office said the cost of developing, building and maintaining 2,443 aircraft — the number currently projected for the U.S. armed services — will top $950 billion.
That number, like the Pentagon budget request for next year, $515 billion, is hard to put into perspective.
Richard Betts, a foreign-policy expert, author and professor at Columbia University, offers a practical way to think about the subject.
“To ask whether the United States can afford higher levels of military spending is stupid,” Betts wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine. “It can, and if necessary, it would. The problem is that there are other important things that the United States wants and can afford, too, and a dollar spent on one thing cannot be spent on another.”
He points to the State Department, whose role in foreign aid and peacekeeping missions is growing more vital today, and says it’s been “comparatively starved.” Its $42 billion budget is a small fraction of Pentagon spending.
“These numbers appear badly unbalanced,” Betts wrote, especially when many of today’s threats stem from political and economic instability and anti-American sentiment.
From 2001 to 2008, spending on defense and related programs grew at an average annual rate of 8 percent after adjusting for inflation and population, according to a recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington.
That compares with average annual growth of 2 percent for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the research group says. And domestic discretionary spending rose just 0.3 percent annually during the period.
Discretionary programs include education, highways, transportation, biomedical research, law enforcement and public health services.
People might assume that the rapid growth in defense spending stems from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and from fighting terrorism. But that’s only part of it. Those initiatives are funded in supplemental bills and outside the Pentagon; strip them out, and, the center says, defense outlays have still grown 4.8 percent annually in real terms.
Many big weapons systems, including Lockheed’s F-22 aircraft, aren’t factors in the current conflicts, but military leaders are always pushing for more. The Air Force, for instance, has been arguing publicly for more F-22s even as the defense secretary says enough are in the pipeline.
It doesn’t make sense to hit the brakes on the F-35, because the U.S. needs to maintain air supremacy in anticipation of threats that aren’t evident now — and aren’t known to the public. But that goal shouldn’t preclude us from reconsidering the number of aircraft needed, especially after the impact of 9-11.
Last year, a study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington said that current conflicts raise “fundamental questions about the need” for the F-35. It noted the emphasis on ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it said that more long-range aircraft will be needed to address potential threats from China and Russia, often cited as the rationale for big defense programs.
“There is reason to worry,” the report said, that F-35 costs will crowd out competing programs.
The report went to some lengths to say it’s not proposing specific changes on the F-35. Rather, it wants to promote a dialogue about ways to reduce costs and still add the plane’s important new capabilities.
The report evaluated the benefits of the Air Force’s halving its order and the Navy’s canceling the special model it needs, which is most expensive. It says fewer F-35s are needed, in part because today’s guided missiles allow multiple attacks from a single sortie.
Co-author Steven Kosiak said few members of Congress or the military embraced the idea of exploring F-35 options. One reason is that all eyes are on Iraq and its supplemental funding of $189 billion.
When presidential candidates talk about saving money on defense, Iraq is the biggest target and the most important political issue.
“We’re in a hot war, and there’s not a lot of precedent for cutting defense,” Kosiak said. “When the country is at war, even a discussion of future systems won’t get that far.”
We deserve better, because there may be a much better way to do this — to balance present and future military needs and national defense and domestic programs.
Maybe next year.
