Reduction in military spending necessary
letter to the editor by Megan McDonough – Wilmington
Kansas City Star
10/30/2012
click here for original article
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Dear Editor:
As November’s election draws near, political issues take an increasingly central role in the minds of the American people. Undoubtedly, the war in Afghanistan and the role of the military are among those issues. With this in mind, I suggest that we need to reconsider the size of the military budget.
After the November elections, Congress will vote on strategies for reining in the national budget and controlling our debt. One plan passed into law by Congress-known as the Budget Control Act-would reduce the growth in Pentagon spending by $1 trillion over the next decade. The decrease in Pentagon spending would allow for the redirection of increasingly scarce resources to other sectors, whether private or public. This reduction in Pentagon spending is needed for four main reasons.
First, the yearly Pentagon budget is upwards of $600 billion, and 39 cents out of every income tax dollar goes toward its spending. The US military budget in 2009 made up 40 percent of the world’s defense spending.
Second, studies have shown that a cut in military spending is feasible. A bipartisan study done in 2010 showed that the “adverse effects of spending cuts would be small” in regard to the entire economy because defense spending makes less than 5 percent of the U.S.’ gross domestic product. It also made clear that such cuts would not compromise our national defense.
Third, these cuts would focus primarily on weapons systems that even the Pentagon does not want. For example, the M1 Abrams tank, a state of the art tank, is currently being produced even though a single unit costs more than $4 million. The Army has made it clear that it does not need any more at this time, yet Congress pushes this funding under the guise of job creation.
However, defense spending is not as an efficient job creator. A study at the University of Massachusetts showed that government spending on health care, clean energy and education created more jobs than the same amount of money spent on defense. Thus, this could be a viable approach to bringing the economy back under control.
Lastly, studies have shown the Pentagon wastes significant resources. In the fall of 2011, the Commission on Wartime Contracting reported that there was an estimated $31 to $60 billion in Pentagon waste and fraud related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In fact, it is the only governmental department that has not passed an audit.
While a dialogue about these statistics and arguments certainly needs to occur, it has not happened in the public arena, and certainly not by the presidential or vice presidential candidates. Perhaps Senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown could be a part of this initiative.
Our nation’s largest source of discretionary spending – Pentagon spending – needs to be reexamined and altered.
