Christopher Preble does the math:
Yesterday Congress passed the $680 billion FY 2010Defense Authorization Bill, which authorizes the largest such budget since the end of World War II. If, as is all but certain, President Obama signs the legislation, he will have failed to halt the inexorable growth in military spending, and he will signal to American taxpayers that they should expect more of the same. What’s worse, most of this money is not geared to defending America. Rather, it encourages other countries to free-ride on the United States instead of taking prudent steps to defend themselves.
The defense bill represents only part of our military spending. The appropriations bill moving through Congress governing veterans affairs, military construction and other agencies totals $133 billion, while the massive Department of Homeland Security budget weighs in at $42.8 billion. This comprises the visible balance of what Americans spend on our national security, loosely defined. Then there is the approximately $16 billion tucked away in the Energy Department’s budget, money dedicated to the care and maintenance of the country’s huge nuclear arsenal.
All told, every man, woman and child in the United States will spend more than $2,700 on these programs and agencies next year. By way of comparison, the average Japanese spends less than $330; the average German about $520; China’s per capita spending is less than $100.
Alex Knapp gets it right:
The amount of money being poured into national security spending is completely irresponsible and unsustainable. We can’t afford it. As we (hopefully) wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to take a real hard look at our foreign policy–particularly why we feel the need to spend more on defense than the rest of the world does combined. There’s no reason why we can’t adopt a more restrained policy and still keep the United States secure. I mean, let’s put this in perspective. We could cut DOD appropriations in half, today, and we’d be spending more on defense than all of the EU nations combined.
We’re spending money we don’t have on an empire we don’t need. It’s time to stop.
October 27th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
While I want us to get out of Afghanistan, and I think Iraq was the worst decision Bush ever made (modern day crusade), I just can’t think of a way we could simply pull up stakes and bring all the troops home and have it come out good for us. I feel like we are trapped in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. We made the mess, by all rights we should clean it up.
We should also never again allow congress to abdicate it’s sole responsibility for declaring war to any President ever again.
Sometimes I wish we could go back to the days when leaders waged war by leading the charge.