When defense spending soars to unseen heights

December 18, 2007

Most of the political establishment agrees that federal defense spending is entirely off-limits — if you look askance at Pentagon funding, you’re necessarily “weak” and insufficiently supportive of the military. As a result, every Bush administration request for defense expenditures has been met by Congress, without exception.

But it’s worth pausing once in a while to appreciate just how much we’re spending on the Armed Forces. Lorelei Kelly, by way of Kevin Drum, explains:

Last week, both houses of Congress approved the conference report on the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization bill, H.R. 1585. The bill includes $506.9 billion for the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy. The bill also authorizes $189.4 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This funding is NOT counted as part of the $506.9 billion. […]

The amount of Cold War lard is truly astonishing, especially given the fact that the military itself is hollering from the hilltops that it can’t be responsible for all of our national security needs and that today’s problems just don’t have military (read “Cold War weapons systems”) answers.

Keep in mind, today’s defense spending is 14% above the height of the Korean War, 33% above the height of the Vietnam War, 25% above the height of the “Reagan Era” buildup and is 76% above the Cold War average

In fact, since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the annual defense budget – not including the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – has gone up 34%. Including war costs, defense spending has gone up 86% since 2001. (emphasis added)

Obviously, we’re living in challenging times. But nearly $700 billion in military spending? In a single year? Yes, there’s a global counter-terrorism campaign underway, but this $700 billion doesn’t include funding for the CIA, NSA, or Department of Homeland Security.

To be sure, there’s peril in the world, but is there this much peril?

I’m reminded of this Fred Kaplan piece from September 2003:

This year, if all goes as President Bush plans, the United States will spend more money on the military than in any year since 1952, the peak of the Korean War. […]

The original defense budget for fiscal year 2004 was $400 billion. Bush’s supplemental request for Iraq and Afghanistan, which he announced last Sunday on television, is $87 billion, for a total of $487 billion. Let’s be conservative and deduct the $21 billion of the supplemental that’s earmarked for civil reconstruction (even though the Defense Department is running the reconstruction). That leaves $466 billion.

By comparison, in constant 2004 dollars (adjusted for inflation), the U.S. defense budget in 1985, the peak of the Cold War and Ronald Reagan’s rearmament, totaled $453 billion. That was $12 billion to $33 billion less than this year’s budget (depending on whether you count reconstruction). In 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War, the budget amounted to $428 billion. That’s $38 billion to $59 billion below Bush’s request for this year.

You have to go back more than 50 years, when 37,000 Americans were dying in the big muddy of Korea, to find a president spending more money on the military — and even that year’s budget, $497 billion in constant dollars, wasn’t a lot more than what Bush is asking today.

And now, just four years later, we’re looking at a spending bill that allots $696.3 billion for the military, blowing away Vietnam, Korea, and the 1980s.

I realize that the Cold War may seem like ancient history. Today’s college seniors were in first grade when the Berlin Wall fell, so the notion of, say, Reagan’s Cold War build-up may sound like we were dealing with an abstract threat.

But the Communist threat was the existential conflict of the 20th century, and the fate of the future of the world was at stake, facing a superpower that could obliterate the United States with the most dangerous weapons ever invented. And even then, in inflation-adjusted numbers, we were spending less than $500 billion a year on the military. Now, we’re spending $700 billion, more than practically the rest of the industrialized world combined.

Is it so unreasonable to wonder if the spending is a little excessive?

I see… looks like another benefactor of 9-11 is the ‘defense’ industry. Follow the money, follow the money.

  • You know what’s ironic? It only took 19 guys with $2 box cutters to make us do it. Estimates are that the entire 9/11 attack only cost about $500k.

    The wingnuts like to say Reagan was a genius for making the Soviets spend themselves into the ground. What does that make bin Laden?

  • CB remember when Bush said “I am a war president”? Well, as the President of the War he needs funds for the troops, funds for the contractors, and funds for equipment. How else is he going to maintain his reign as War President. He has to keep all the war mongers who comprise his “kingdom” happy.

  • It’s amazing how outside Kucinich, no one dares talk about cutting defense spending (for fear of Zell Miller accusing Dems of arming the coutry with a mere $400 billion dollars woth of “spitballs”.)

    Meanwhile we have 7000 nuclear weapons ready to roll, have violated Article VI of the NPT by developing bunker-busters and dirty nukes, but won’t allow Iran to even enrich Uranium even though we invaed both of their neighbors, but are totally fine with Pakistan having nukes, and [head explodes].

  • The effects of inflation of the U.S. Dollar on the defense budget should also be a consideration.

    Someone please enlighten me: how does maintaining an American Empire (the reality of which seems to have been suppressed in public education and the Old-Stream Media) with 700+ military bases in 130+ countries around the world (with 100,000 military personnel in Japan and South Korea alone) “protect” our country from hijackers with boxcutters piloting aircraft into skyscrapers? And, in such a catastrophic event, how does the American Empire protect steel-framed skyscrapers from completely collapsing?

    How does the American Empire defend the airspace above the U.S. Military Command Center in Washington, D.C. when it was completely breached by hijackers with boxcutters piloting aircraft on 9/11?

    How does bankrupting our country through the continuation of the American Empire serve the interests of our National Defense?

    Lastly, how does the American Empire serve the interests of our National Defense when anthrax is sent through the U.S. Postal Service to United States Senators and the crime remains unsolved six years later?

  • It would be “… unreasonable to wonder if the spending is a little excessive” if all you were factoring in was the objective threat to our nation in today’s world.

    But when you view that amount as mostly being returned to the decision makers (elected and otherwise) in the form of campaign contributions, dividends, salaries and war profiteering …, well, it’s exactly what President (and General) Eisenhower warned us about in his Farewell Address: we have indeed become little more than a military-industrial complex.

  • The lawmakers are afraid to cut funding because the defense contractors on the media. GE owns CBS IIRC. Fox is its own bizarre little empire that will scream at anything that is sensible. The rest just follow the herd.

  • When the cold war ended there was a healthy debate about what to do with the “peace dividend.” Those were the days, weren’t they? When was the last time you heard that phrase?

    Well, we sure found out what to do with it: more military spending, and pointless, endless wars.

    Is it not time to revisit Afghanistan, and ask ourselves what the hell we’re doing there? What was the original mission?

    Milatarism is to the whole country what evangelism is to the Republicans. It’s something that we have shamelessly exploited for political gain, and now it’s become so entrenched in our national psyche that it has enslaved us. We can’t get away from it anymore. As liberals we can stand back and laugh at the irony as Huckabee becomes the Republican nightmare, but as a nation, we can’t see our way out of it, or what it has done to us. We can only scream for more wars, more military might, more spending.

  • You know what’s ironic? It only took 19 guys with $2 box cutters to make us do it. Estimates are that the entire 9/11 attack only cost about $500k.

    The wingnuts like to say Reagan was a genius for making the Soviets spend themselves into the ground. What does that make bin Laden?

    That makes bin Laden giggly like a school girl. In his wildest dreams 9/11 was never going to be so successful, but between the monumental stupidity of the Iraq war, the deliberate efforts to lose in Afghanistan, the complete loss of U.S. moral authority occasioned by use by the U.S. government of authoritarian and terrorist tactics against the American people and the rest of the world, and blowing holes in the U.S. budget that will handicap our economy for at least decades to come, bin Laden has been refined from a terrorist into a member of a highly selective and desirable terrorist subset: religious prophet.

  • #10, should be “Militarism.” Yikes. Even when I just corrected it I wrote “Milatarism” again.

    I hate these typo gremlins. They are so embarrassing, and no matter how many times I read the Preview I don’t see them until I post. Ugh.

  • You’re way off base here, CB.

    Bush has done his best to keep military costs down.

    He’s cut budgets for body and vehicle armor and VA hospitals until it hurt.
    He laid off expensive Arabic translators when he could. (DADT)
    He TRIED to get back the signup bonuses that namby-pamby “phony” injured soldiers thought they deserved.
    Hell, he’s even tried to make soldiers pay for their own Purple Hearts!

    This guy knows how to pinch a penny!
    Now if only we could teach him how to squeeze a dollar.

  • #1 Congress should just say NO!

    #2 Every domestic bill that was vetoed or threatened to be vetoed by Bush, that has to do with the care and education of Americans should have the cost in billions deducted from the Defense Budget.

    Every time the GOP denies Americans there rights ; spends even more for their programs of corruption ,lies and deceit there is another nail in the coffin of the GOP. Hopefully the GOP will be buried by 2008. and hopefully the Democratic party will develop a spine.

    Boehner talks about fiscal responsibility domestically but never talks about the runaway war budget.

    All this is maddening.

  • But, but, ….if you cancel something like the F-22 , then we’ll have nothing to fend off the hordes of Soviet combat aircraft as they cross the West German border!!

    Jeez, it’s not like this threat is going away anytime soon.

  • hark said:

    #10, should be “Militarism.” Yikes. Even when I just corrected it I wrote “Milatarism” again.

    I hate these typo gremlins. They are so embarrassing, and no matter how many times I read the Preview I don’t see them until I post. Ugh.

    Don’t worry Hark, we make as many reados as there are typos so we never notice them. We correct them by misreading them.

  • But the Communist threat was the existential conflict

    This is weird. Was communism the existential menace? Or was it nuclear arms in the hands of rival superpowers? Minus the nukes you had standard great-power maneuvering. Certainly non-nuclear left-wing states were never an existential threat in the way fascism was. Maybe that’s partly for geographical reasons, but it’s still true.

  • The pathetic part of this outrageous expenditure is how little of it goes towards the actual troops who fight for us. Most of that money is being gobbled up by Republican-friendly defense contractors. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that manpower is at a 60-year low, it isn’t hard to cite examples from the last 6 years where the Bush team has tried to save money at the expense of soldiers and readyness.

  • Lastly, how does the American Empire serve the interests of our National Defense when anthrax is sent through the U.S. Postal Service to United States Senators and the crime remains unsolved six years later?

    Silly – those anthrax letters only went to Democratic polititcians. Therefore, as far as Republican’ts are concerned, no crime was committed.

    I vaguely remember Stalkin’ Malkin express her disappointment that they didn’t succeed.

  • Peril? The only peril I feel comes from Washington DC not from darryl and his other brother Darryl in some Pakistani hillbilly outpost.

    I face a greater threat eating at McDonalds or driving to the Post Office than I do from the bogeymen.

  • Btw, business owners who sited their defense industries throughout more Congressional districts is what props it all up. Presidents make big wasteful proposals, particularly with active wars but overall, it’s Congress defending widespread pork that makes it so insidious and difficult to dislodge.

  • This government needs an enema.

    Isn’t it about time we the people got serious about choosing our representatives? We need non-interventionist policies. Ever wonder WHY people from half way around the globe would hi-jack planes with box cutters and fly them into buildings? It has NOTHING to do with how much stuff we have or what religion predominates our society. We have military bases everywhere. We bully smaller countries all the time. We are involved in assassinations and cous. And now we invade countries illegally and hold prisoners indefinitely without due process.

    Think hard, people. Don’t re-elect an incumbent just because you know the name. Research. Learn. Find out what they are REALLY doing. Don’t let the letter at the end of their name (D, R, I, etc) influence your decision.

  • Our presidential candidates and congress should look more to the reduction of terrorism through anti-poverty measures which are far less expensive than military options. According to the Borgen Project only 19 billion dollars of foreign would be enough to eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally. This years US military budget was 522 billion dollars.

  • It is even more alarming when you consider future implications. For every dime mis-spent on an errent Middle east policy, we guarantee future problems in the region that increase exponentially, as will our potential spending to try and correct or contain them. As long as we need to purchase oil, or if we want to maintain high moral ground, we must stop poking a stick in the eye of the Arab world.

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