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Big, Bad Budgets

Published by marco on

Ben Cohen has published Enemy Wanted on AlterNet which talks about more government obfuscation, this time with a specific example involving the U.S. military. The Pentagon’s budget next year is expected to top $400 Billion. The money is being spent solely to fund defense contracting companies. All of the hardware provided can’t possibly help in the war on terrorism. Seriously, why does the U.S. need more submarines?

“Even Lawrence Korb, a top defense official under Ronald Reagan, says we’re spending tens of billions of dollars on new submarines, planes, and tanks that will be just as useless at fighting terrorists as our current high tech wonders.”

The nations highest on the enemies list have puny military budgets, with “…Iran, Iraq and North Korea … spend[ing] $12 billion annually on their militaries combined.” The next big enemy that Bush want to crush, Iraq, “spends less than $2 billion.”

This money could be so much better spent, both domestically and internationally. Domestically, it could be used to shore up a failing school system, in which the emphasis is increasingly to vouchered, private education that doesn’t benefit the majority of the population, who can’t afford it. If the money were invested internationally, in medical, disease-control and food programs, the good-will would combat terrorism infinitely more than a massive military buildup does.

“While the administration wants to spend $400 billion on the Pentagon, America would spend only $10 billion on foreign aid, $8 billion on the entire EPA, $4 billion on the Centers for Disease Control, and less than $1 billion on refugee programs and the Peace Corps. ”