Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms 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" (available at http://www.independent.org). The Arms Trade Resource Center was established in 1993 to engage in public education and policy advocacy aimed at promoting restraint in the international arms trade. _____________________________ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will become disabled or deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. I am making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for in the US Copyright Law.
