House Passes Bloated Defense Spending Bill

Last Monday, the House and Senate armed services committees announced they had finally reached an agreement on funding for military spending for 2014. The figure they agreed on was $625.5 billion. And on Thursday, the House of Representatives passed that bill and sent it on to the Senate (who will no doubt also pass it -- after they finish arguing about judicial nominations). There were 350 House members voting for the bill (142 Democrats and 208 Republicans), and 69 members voting against it (50 Democrats and 19 Republicans).

The $625.5 billion funding does represent a small cut in military funding from the 2012 figure of $682 billion (about 8.28%), but it still represents more than half of all federal government discretionary spending. That means if you add up all the other government programs paid for with discretionary spending (education, food stamps, environmental protection, welfare, unemployment insurance, job training, housing assistance, foreign aid, law enforcement, and many other programs), they would not equal the spending on the military (most of which goes to the corporations in the military-industrial complex, not our soldiers). Is it any wonder that we don't have the money to help hurting Americans?

And there is no reason to keep putting that kind of money into the obviously bloated military budget. We certainly don't need to spend that much just to defend this nation. Note (in the chart above) that no other nation anywhere in the world spends anywhere near that much on their military. The nation spending the second largest amount is China, which only spends about $166 billion (or about 26.5% of what the United States spends). In fact, you would have to add together the total spending of the next 10 biggest spenders to equal the spending of the United States.

The Republicans will tell you that nothing can be cut from that huge military spending bill without putting this nation in danger of not being able to defend itself (and too many Democrats will vote with them, because they are afraid of being accused of hurting national defense). But that is just a lie they tell so they can continue funneling tax dollars to their corporate friends (for pie-in-the-sky systems -- many of which don't work or aren't needed or wanted by the military).

The truth is that we could cut our military budget by 25% (or even 50%) and still be spending far more than any other nation in the world -- and we could do it without hurting our ability to defend this country. We could do it by eliminating programs that don't work and are not wanted by the military, by closing a significant amount of the more than 800 military bases we have around the world, and by stopping the ridiculous wars around the world in "nation-building" efforts (which our incursions in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan should have shown us simply don't work).

Just think of all the good that could be done in this country with that money -- in fixing the economy, creating new jobs, educating our youth, protecting our environment, and helping the poor & disadvantaged.