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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-08-20
© 2011 Peter Belmont
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Apart, perhaps, from raising income and estate taxes on the very rich, the USA has no people-friendly way to reduce government spending so obvious as cutting the “defense” budget.
I offer some suggestions.
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The USA’s military/”intelligence” budget is out of control. It is time to start a discussion about reining it in.
The USA’s “defense” spending is way out of control. The foxes have ruled the chicken coop for too long. What government calls “defense” (military bases world-wide, not infrequent war-fighting and planned follow-on re-building of destroyed “enemy” infrastructure, “intelligence”, “anti-terrorism”, “homeland security”) costs so much that the total is hidden from the electorate and from the Congress as well.
I use quotation marks around “defense”, “intelligence”, “anti-terrorism” and “homeland security” to emphasize that these terms are advertising terms, not accurate descriptions, of what is going on.
Most of what is going on, under these rubrics, in my opinion, is what used to be called war-profiteering, that is, the transfer of money from the federal fisc to corporations for their (excessive) profit without much regard for the utility (or the fair pricing) of the goods and services provided. The failure of the government to account for billions spent on reconstruction work in Iraq is in this regard typical rather than aberrant. After all, who wants to account for war-profiteering?
Much of what is spent might be recovered if those who benefit from the expense were billed for it. Korea could pay for the enormous USA military presence along the DMZ which has been there since the 1950s. Europe could pay for the enormous USA military presence in Europe.
If these forces are not worth the costs to those who benefit, the soldiers should be called home. The Marshall Plan ended a long time ago, and the USA has other more pressing things to pay for, including paying down the national debt.
Much of the benefit (if any) accruing from the enormous USA military empire of bases world-wide, particularly in oil-producing parts of the world, is a benefit to ALL who use oil and desire a steady uninterrupted supply of it. The USA and its corporations[1] benefit, to be sure, but so do all the world’s governments and corporations. If all benefit, all should pay for the military services. If they will not (over all) pay, then the USA should stop subsidizing the rest of the world by closing its bases and bringing its military home.
Another source of apparent excess expense (and excess war-profiteering) is the use of the services of contract workers paid for through corporations. The military and “intelligence” such as CIA and NSA have given over much work which once was done by soldiers and intelligence analysts to contract workers via companies like “Blackwater”, now “Xe Services”. If the costs (including wages and overheads such as corporate profits, health, and pension costs) of such contract workers exceeds the costs of DoD and CIA and NSA employees, the contracts should be terminated and overnment employees used instead.
One of the most grotesque outcomes of the contract-worker syndrome, perhaps especially in the “intelligence” and “anti-terrorism” spheres, is that the corporations (or their employees serving as contract workers) are often asked to recommend other and further work to be done—you guessed it—by contract workers. The whole system “grows like topsy”.
But, of course, the military procurement system (as well as the military/”intelligence” contract-labor system) was built (as President Eisenhower warned) on the “Topsy” model.
Here’s how it works. First most Congresspeople have adopted the ideology of “strong defense”. There is no limit to “strong” The stronger the better. There is no rational consideration of “threats”.
Second, military production is a “jobs” program. Lots of well-paid jobs in every Congressional district. Very expensive because well-paid. But jobs are jobs and most Congresspeople have adopted the “jobs” ideology. (Not of course all jobs. Not “make work” jobs. The CCC and WPA helped take the USA out of the depression of the 1930s, but that was then and this is now. And, anyway, who can argue with a strong “defense”?)
Third, military production makes huge profits and a small (but important) part of that profit finds its way to, yes, most Congresspeople via lobbying, campaign contributions, post-Congress jobs (especially as lobbyists), etc. Most Congresspeople have adopted the ideology of “indefinite re-election”.
Now, many or most Congresspeople have also adopted the ideologies of “balanced budget”, “small government”, “small government expenditure”, etc. These are the “checks and balances”, or should be, to the competing ideologies of “strong defense”, “jobs”, and indefinite re-election”. But they cannot compete. That’s an observational fact. In operation, Congress has no “checks and balances” against the ideologies which promote a bloated “defense.”
The contract-labor folks, of course, also make obscene profits at the corporate level. (Also at the worker level. Many CIA and NSA and military folks leave government employment to take on jobs doing the same work, for higher pay, with the corporate contract-worker firms.) And, as with the military procurement industry, they funnel a (small but important) proportion of those profits into lobbying and campaign finance, and jobs for retired Congresspeople and their families.
The way to cut military expenditure is, first, to begin a public discussion of military and intelligence needs. The real needs, not the blown-up pseudo needs used to justify today’s huge budgets. And a public disclosure of military/”intelligence”/”anti-terrorism”/”homeland security” expenditures. Give us the facts, just the facts, on these, if you please.
Next, analyze the benefits from the various several elements of the USA’s far-flung military empire. Retire those bases which are of no benefit to the USA. Make others pay their fair share of the remaining costs of these bases (in the case of Korea, perhaps the entire cost). If the bases are a benefit to the entire world, find a way to make the entire world pay for them. Stop subsidizing the entire world at the expense of the USA’s taxpayers. And make the very rich PAY TAXES as a way to bring home to them the fact that all this “defense” costs real money.
Terminate wars that are no advantage to the USA. And be careful not to start any new ones. No war with Iran, for example, a country presently without nuclear weapons which is currently and historically far more stable than Pakistan, a country which already has (and which appears to have exported) nuclear weapon technology and weapons.
If there is a benefit (which I have never seen demonstrated by cogent argument, but I’m willing to listen) to the USA’s military bases in oil-producing regions of the world, then that benefit is hardly a benefit to the USA alone. Get the rest of the world to chip in. (China buys our debt, but does not tear up the bonds. We are supposed to pay off the national debt someday. Did you know that? We really are supposed to pay it off!)
Does Congress know that? Hmm, I wonder. But then I wonder what Congress knows, more generally. Some of them don’t believe in evolution and global warming, see no harm in an indefinitely expanding world population. “Nut cases” belong in a candy store, not in Congress.
If contract-labor is economically preferable to government employment, terminate the CIA and NSA and DoD and turn it all over to the corporations. Privatize everything.
But otherwise, roll-back the privatization. If its a close enough call, recall that there are important reasons why military and “intelligence” decisions and operations should be in government (and not in private) hands. Government employees answer, ultimately, to the voters. Corporate employees answer, always, to their corporate CEOs. Having FBI and CIA spying on all your telephone calls and “tweets” and “emails” is bad enough, but having low-level, ill-selected, badly-vetted clerks of Quasi-CIA, Inc., doing the same thing (and augmenting their incomes by a spot of blackmail) is, in my opinion, far worse.
That’s a start.
Let’s start a discussion.
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[1] It is not clear to me that a line can usefully and meaningfully be drawn delimiting USA corporations from other corporations. Corporate stock and debt is owned in a cross-borders manner. Japanese and Chinese own shares in corporations chartered in the USA. Americans own stock and debt in corporations chartered in Europe and Asia. Apart, possibly, but less and less, on local taxation, there is no such thing as an American corporation.
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