Excess funds in the Pentagon budget
For the sake of argument I'm going to assume that every dollar of the enormous, bloated, military budget that the Pentagon requests is completely justified.
Nevermind that the Pentagon has never been able to pass an audit. Can you imagine if any other government agency failed to pass an audit even once? The right-wing would immediately be calling for the agency to be shut down and people arrested. But the Pentagon fails to pass an audit year after year, decade after decade, and no one cares.
Nevermind that the failure and waste in Pentagon weapon systems are indescribable. Just take the example of the F-35 fighter jet - an epic waste of $1.7 TRILLION (an amount roughly equal to Biden's 10 year infrastructure plan). Is Congress and the media screaming for reforms at the Pentagon? Nope. But if a program that helps the poor has a couple million dollars in waste watch the right-wing tear their hair out.
We should be under no illusions - as Trump's 2017 Defense budget showed in unmistakable language, the excess funds that go to the military are taken directly from domestic social programs, such as HUD. Did you wonder where all the low-income housing went? Now you know.
Instead I'm going to focus on ONLY the amount of money given to the Pentagon IN ADDITION to what the Pentagon said that they needed to accomplish all of their tasks (aka money that the Pentagon never needed or even asked for).
This is not an exaggeration. So much excess money is getting thrown at the Pentagon that every year they return billions of dollars to the Treasury because they simply can't spend it fast enough.
The Pentagon returned almost $128 billion in unspent cash to the U.S. Treasury in the 11 years ending in 2019, according to a first-of-its-kind audit by Congress’s watchdog agency...
“Congress has appropriated so much money for the Defense Department that the Pentagon does not know what to do with it,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders said this month, referring to older GAO figures that indicated there were about $80 billion in canceled funds between 2013 and 2018.
Just so I'm clear, the total of waste/fat in the Pentagon budget is much, MUCH larger than what I'm talking about here. I'm only talking about obvious excess.
2016 Defense budget: $38 Billion
It also passed despite heavy opposition among Democrats and some conservatives over the use of a war fund to boost defense spending next year.
Republicans added $38 billion to the war fund to give the Pentagon spending above the budget caps created by the sequester, but they left the limits in place for nondefense spending. Democrats and the White House want the sequester lifted in full.
2017 Defense budget: $30 Billion
The White House is requesting $30 billion more in defense spending for fiscal year 2017 to pay for the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), more equipment across the services and other items considered urgently needed.
2018 Defense budget: $32 Billion
Many lawmakers have pushed for the military budget to increase far beyond what Trump proposed last year. Trump sought $668 billion in spending for national defense in 2018, but Congress passed a bipartisan defense authorization bill late last year that would direct roughly $700 billion to military spending.
2019 Defense budget: $28 Billion
The bill represents $28 billion more than the president’s request and more than $60 billion above last year’s levels.
2020 Defense budget: $20 Billion
The Pentagon is asking for a colossal $718 billion for its 2020 defense budget.
It got $738 Billion in 2020.
2021 Defense budget: $13 Billion
Pentagon asked for $740 Billion, but got $753 Billion.
2022 Defense budget: $25 Billion
The United States Senate has passed a $777bn defence spending bill, sending the legislation to the desk of President Joe Biden for final approval.
Biden is expected to sign the bill, which authorises $25bn more than the US president requested, but the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency on its passage on Wednesday.
Let's add all of this up.
That's excess funds of $186 Billion over 7 years, which comes to $26.6 Billion a year.
Now what could this country do with $26.6 Billion, if it wasn't literally wasting it?
Cost of eliminating homelessness in the United States: $20 Billion.
Cost of ending hunger in the United States: $25 Billion.
Just so we're clear: all Congress would have to do is take Pentagon's requested budget and rubber-stamp it, which would have ZERO political costs. They could then use those excess billions that would normally be literally wasted, and they could eliminate homelessness and/or hunger in America today.
But our politicians have decided instead that they would rather put all that cash into a pile and burn it, rather than eliminate hunger and homelessness in this country.
That's how little they think of you. Your needs and suffering are not even worth consideration. They wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.
Comments
there's a hole in daddy's arm
where all the money goes
This recent article
This recent article lays out a great argument for severely cutting the Department of
WarDefense budget. It was written by a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and was first posted at Tom Dispatch.And while the Department of Defense budget is a mind boggling $3/4 Trillion, there is more. The total outlay for national security is far greater, an estimated $1.3 Trillion! The irony here is all this massive spending is not making us any safer. In fact, it is making us less safe as we go around the world interfering in the internal affairs of other nations and still bombing people in undeclared wars in at least seven of those countries in addition to having at least an estimated 800 military bases throughout the world.
This is obscene and it comes at the expense of the safety and well being of the American people. And as the topping on this shit sandwich, the US military is the world's single largest polluter.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Violence only creates more violence in the future.
Its a vicious circle.
I can’t find any words for this stupidity and cruelty
I’ve tweeted it to get eyes on it and let people know how badly we’re being fck'd. Don’t know what good it’ll do, but it needs to be seen.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Wasted Money
I live in a rural area with a lot of senior citizens. Many of them get a whopping $20.00 a month as EBT benefits, (food stamps). Instead of all of this waste, it seems like the government could at least use this money to even make a modest increase to $50.00 or $60.00. Then maybe they could afford some meat or a few fresh vegetables.
Let's not forget this Doozie.
In the Summer of 2016, the following scandal should have dwarfed Hillary's emails and Trump's pee tape, but instead we were distracted:
Suppose almost none is? What then?
Suppose its a shameless money grab? Would they audit themselves, honestly? Supposed asked point blank, do we neeed all these bombs, billion dollar technology, etc, and if so, why? More than the things we all here kno we do need, like schools and health care, and science.
How can we get to where we need to go from where we are now, responsibly?
Its just totally crazy how much we spend.
Whats the business case for that? We're supposed to cut back on agricultural subsidies. Like government buying food, thats actually seen as really important by many countries.
It would be different if we let other countries buy food for their own people, but we don't. How do we break the rules for ourselves and then get away with telling other countries not to break them, you see?
Here is another example, I have some personal experience with the worst case market failures, and of course, far too often it doesn't work to tell people what to charge for goods and services.
Producers and consumers always find ways to get around rules.
This video strikes a good balance in explaining this complex and controversial subject. But it leaves important stuff out. Look at the description of public goods, the international trade law works like that too! Make a note of that. A lot more will make sense to people.