Our Outrageous Military Budget

This chart is from the Wonkblog at the Washington Post. It shows the ridiculously bloated military budget of the United States (2011) compared to the military budgets of the next 13 biggest spenders. It takes all 13 of those countries put together to come close to equalling the military spending of the United States -- and still falls a few billion dollars short. You could cut the U.S. military budget in half, and it would still far exceed that of any other country (and would be significantly more than the spending of China and Russia combined).

Do we really need to spend that much money to defend this nation? Of course not. Nobody wants to mess with China and Russia -- and the spend hundreds of billions less than the United States. And don't think this huge budget goes mainly toward pay and housing for our soldiers -- because it doesn't. The expenditure for that has remained relatively flat since the 1960's (at around $100 billion, or slightly more).

So where does the real money go? A big hunk of it goes to fighting the illegal and unnecessary "nation-building" effort in Afghanistan (and Iraq). Much of the rest of it goes into corporate bank accounts to pay for developing and building weapons systems -- many of which are not needed or wanted by the military, and some don't even work, or are duplicates of other programs. This money is not spent to defend our nation, but to fulfill the pork barrel spending for senators & representatives, so they can brag to their constituents and get re-elected.

I have said it many times before, and I will keep repeating it -- we need to significantly cut our military budget. We need to cut it by at least 25%, if not more. That kind of cut could go a long way toward helping hurting Americans and getting this economy back on track. Americans have been fooled into thinking that social programs make up the bulk of discretionary spending, but the truth is that about a third of the military spending could pay for all the social programs put together.

Republicans would like you to think that our social program spending is bloated, and much too large. Not true. It is the military budget that is bloated, and much too large. But the GOP won't cut that, because that might take some dollars out of corporate pockets -- and many Democrats won't cut it, because they are afraid of being accused of putting the national defense at risk. Neither party will touch this "sacred cow", because they are more concerned with their own political careers than doing what is good for the economy, the budget, and the country.

The best thing we could do for this country fiscally would be to cut the military budget -- not just a little, but a lot.