The Parties Come Together to Save the Military-Industrial Complex

Pentagon

As anyone exposed to a whiff of news media knows, Republicans and Democrats are more divided than ever. They just can’t come together like they used to, goes the cliché.

But this week, they did come together. Republican Paul Ryan and Democrat Patty Murray hashed out a budget deal to avoid automatic sequestration cuts. It was a genuine “compromise,” as the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart quipped.

As has been widely reported, the real motivator in this “compromise” was the supposedly “dire” cuts in defense spending. There have been vociferous warnings from Congress and the Pentagon that sequestration will weaken America by taking an ax to national defense and leaving us vulnerable to attack.

Obviously that’s nonsense. The U.S. could cut its defense budget in half, unthinkably more drastic than sequestration, and still outspend China, which is the U.S.’s next highest spending competitor.

As a 2011 report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found, while the source of growth in annual defense budgets since 2001 has been mostly (54%) due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of the rest has been spent on wasteful superfluous weapons technology, bloated salaries and benefits plans, and expensive peacetime operating costs for the 900-plus military bases in 130-plus countries around the world.

Here’s Cathy Reisenwitz’s take, at The Blaze:

The deal, brokered with Senate budget chair Patty Murray, increases federal spending by $45 billion, doesn’t touch Medicare or Social Security and forces Americans to pay more to be felt-up and naked-scanned by the TSA. And all to prop up the already-bloated budget of the Department of Defense, which gets half of that additional spending.

…With a DoD annual budget of $629 billion, the United States’s military spending defies all logic and common sense. The United States is responsible for 39 percent of all the military spending in the the world. Sequestration would put the DoD’s budget at about $475 billion. That would mean the United States would only outspend the next-biggest competitor, China, by $309 billion.

Luckily, to deal with the shortfall the Pentagon could easily cut around $70 billion from the budget over 10 years simply by getting rid of waste, without threatening any Army brigade combat teams, Navy combat ships or Air Force fighter squadrons. For immediate relief, the Pentagon could save the $23 billion it wasted in 2013 overusing contractors and underusing oversight according to one senior defense official.

And here’s Dave Gilson at Mother Jones:

Before the budget deal, some critics of defense spending had been ready to accept sequestration as the blunt, imperfect tool that might force the military to shed some of the bulk it acquired while fighting two of the longest and most expensive wars in our history. Even with the sequester in place, the Pentagon’s base budget was set to remain well above pre-9/11 levels for the next decade, and the military would have taken a far smaller haircut than it did after Vietnam and the Cold War wound down.

…”These ‘terrible’ cuts would return us to historically high levels of spending,” snapped Winslow Wheeler of theProject on Government Oversight. According to Lawrence J. Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the Pentagon could reduce its budget by $100 billion a year without undermining its readiness. The sequestration cuts for 2013 amounted to $37 billion.

It’s worth noting that House representatives probably felt more pressure from corporate defense lobbyists than from the top military brass. Pentagon officials regularly testify to Congress that billions of dollars here and billions of dollars there are being wasted on things that they don’t want or need. Congress typically ignores this budgetary advice from the generals because defense corporations give extraordinary amounts of money to political campaigns and strategically set up factories in politically tactical districts in order to scare elected officials away from cutting the defense budget for fear of an uptick in unemployment.

The lesson here is that the intransigent partisanship that has saddled Congress with political deadlock quickly becomes an ephemeral trifle once their corporate welfare queens urge them to come together to take more money from taxpayers and give it to the people who make war.

46 thoughts on “The Parties Come Together to Save the Military-Industrial Complex”

  1. Congress has long been challenged by simple arithmetic, but even they should realize that a few thousand war industry jobs are outweighed by the millions for whom they just cut extended unemployment benefits. Sequestration has proven to be just another charade, ignored when it comes to corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy, but cited as the imperative for a new round of cuts on those least able to make ends meet. Hope voters haven't forgotten this by November, 2014.

    1. Welfare for the Clowns In Green, or CIG as I've taken to calling ZOG's military, their corporate whores and defending Israel is far more important to the American Knesset than millions of unemployed and destitute citizens and crumbling infrastructure. I hope the people don't forget and learn before it's too late who their true enemies are. Sometimes when people have nothing to lose, they lose it.

    2. I concur with your sentiments, RIC, but don't share the optimism of your final sentence. Let's not forget that this so-called "compromise" is the product of both parties. The US populace only has the illusion of choice when is comes to our rigged elections. (Rigged in the sense that the powers-that-be prevent another major party from developing). The D/R monopoly dances around and argues about domestic issues, but always come together when it comes to feeding the MIC monster.

  3. I do not have much knowledge about this field but I always look forward to the positive dynamics of it. Isolation proven just a charade, ignore when it comes to corporate welfare and tax cuts for the rich, but are cited as required for a new round of cuts on the little ability to earn a living. Many thanks for sharing this, I'm looking forward to.

  4. Indeed, the introduction of the military-industrial zone into practice is a good plan and good. I'm looking forward to the new event happens and good effects that these areas bring

  7. Maybe if we can get the DoD to take on universal health care in the U.S., some our misdirected spending problems can be solved?

  8. The last part of the story is interesting. Yes, the money goes to Israel along with all the WMD to make wars on their neighbors. And now congress is looking to triple the amount of aid it send to Israel. Anyone wants to puke?

  11. Both parties are a shadow play to occupy the public, who argue about the merits of various rotating figurehead presidents, while corporate masters actually rule us.

    1. Or is it foreign moneymen, bankers and moles, appointing our leaders, by winning the auctions we call elections? To me it seems that the American electorate is at the bottom on the list of our leaders concerns. It's always about something other than America's problems! It has gotten so extreme that this administration is now talking about going all out for Al Quaeta against Assad, our former ally…… Why were we rebuilding Iraq before we were ousted, but let much of America sink into squalor and unproductivity……. What will be this government's next foreign boondagle they want to squander yours and mine hard earned tax dollars they extort from us and send to Israel, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen Mali, Congo……….

  12. defense spending cuts, if this can be done with the specific and precise. Ensuring safe and attentive service but do so on the alert always.

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  15. The overly simplistic narrative the media has decided upon to describe the recent instability in Iraq is that al-Qaeda-linked terrorists took over Fallujah, and the question now is how does the U.S. and Iraqi government remedy the situation and stave of a potential outbreak of civil war.

  17. Thank you all for your interest here. Thousands of people have been dieing every year since 1945 so gun-makers can make money. I am sad for the housewives making missiles and bombs and bullets that will kill so many children. Let's take this blood money that comes from our paychecks and buy solar panels and windmills and clean our air. Lets employ people in peaceful positive ways that will enrich their lives and the planet. Simply put, we have let this machine take our money and buy our government and kill people so that they can have more money. Its time to care. This is my starting point.

  18. The mess in the Middle East is the same that has gone on before. We went in there to fight armies that were armed by us and the Soviets and then we leave Iraq and Afghanistan and a huge amount of weapons behind only to return to fight them (ISIS) and the Taliban as they use those weapons against us. We have to go back to congress to ask for more money for newer weapons to fight them. Around and around it goes and who says anything about it. Our income is not growing, but the defense budget has been. Imagine the peaceful jobs we could provide with 10% (80 bill) of the defense money.

  19. I don't have much information about this field yet I generally anticipate the positive motion of it. Disengagement demonstrated simply an act, overlook in terms of corporate welfare and tax reductions for the rich, however are refered to as needed for another round of slices on the little capacity to procure a living. Numerous a debt of gratitude is in order regarding offering this, I'm anticipating. Painters Adelaide</>

    1. Both parties are a shadow play to occupy the public, who argue about the merits of various rotating figurehead presidents, while corporate masters actually rule us. cheap traffic

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