The Idiocy Of U.S. Discretionary Spending

This is the way the idiots in Washington allocated our discretionary spending last year. (You can click on the graphic to make the image larger and easier to read.) Note that spending for the military made up 52% of the budget. That means we spent more on the military than we spent on everything else put together (education, health, food aid, welfare, foreign aid, transportation, environment, unemployment, law enforcement, courts, etc.). How on earth can this possibly be justified?

The Republicans tell us this is necessary to defend ourselves (and too many Democrats go along with that, because they're afraid of being labeled as "anti-American" or "weak on defense"). That is unadulterated horse crap! The truth is we don't have to spend near this much to defend ourselves. The United States spends more on its military than the next 15 biggest spenders on their military all put together (and that 15 includes nations like Russia, China, Great Britain, France, etc.). In fact, the United States spending on its military comprises about 45% of the total military spending of all the world's nations.

Does it really make sense that our national defense requires us to spend nearly as much as all of the rest of the world's nations put together? Of course not. We could cut our military spending in half and still be spending far more than any other nation on this planet (friend or foe). And that would be more than enough to defend ourselves from any outside threat posed by any other nation.

But what about terrorism? Don't we need to spend this money to protect ourselves from terrorists? No, we don't. Like it or not, our military has been very ineffective at controlling terrorism. Invading other countries and occupying them has just made more terrorists, not less. And the few times the military has been effective against terrorists, it has been with small highly-trained teams -- like the killing of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team 6 (and the training and operations of these make up a small and insignificant portion of the military budget).

The fact is that the FBI (and other policing agencies) have been far more effective in controlling and eliminating terrorism than the military has been. And if you'll note on the chart above, the entire cost of the federal administration of justice is only about 4% of the discretionary budget (and that includes many other expenses, such as the administration of our federal courts system).

But wouldn't slashing military spending significantly mean less pay and benefits for our military personnel? It shouldn't. Most of the money allocated to the military budget actually goes to the corporations in the military-industrial complex, where many billions of dollars are spent each year to develop pie-in-the-sky weapons systems (most of which don't work and must finally be abandoned).

Even in good economic times, it would be ridiculous to spend the majority of our discretionary spending on the military. In our current jobless recession, it is sheer lunacy. Just think of all the money that would be freed up to both help hurting Americans and cut the deficit (and national debt) by significantly cutting the military budget (and as I said before, we could cut the military budget in half and still be spending far more than any other country in the world).

But that is unlikely to happen. The sad fact is that our politicians have decided it is more important to fatten the corporate bank accounts of the military-industrial complex, than it is to help hurting Americans. And that is not just wrong -- it is immoral.