War Machine

I don't recall how I made my way to this link, but this gargantuan graphic of the 2008 United States budget is...interesting, in a maddening kind of way. Yes, we pay 67% of our discretionary budget (non-entitlement programs such as SS, Medicare, et cetera, which are funded separately) on military and national security. That's over $700 Billion, out of $1.1 trillion. And what do we have to show for it? World peace and prosperity? Not so much. Economic dominance? Seemingly slipping away; we were just passed by China as the #2 exporter (in case you're curious, #1 is a country of 82 million people that sits in the middle of Europe, has a high standard of living, and makes some nice cars too).

Do any of the three (OK, two) presidential candidates even talk about military expenditures? No, not really. Unless it's about an increase in said expenditures, perhaps. Nobody wants to sound like they're soft on the bad guys. Plus, they probably suspect that the big military contractors will do their best to scuttle any campaign that even thinks about substantially reducing the Pentagon's budget, and they're probably right. Remember how quickly Howard Dean was shouted down four years ago when he had the temerity to suggest that we wouldn't necessarily always have the world's biggest military? As if the third-largest country in the world has the God-given right to the biggest military force on the planet.

While plenty of things are broken in this country, things that tax money could really go a long way toward fixing, the military-industrial complex will continue to devour the lion's share of the budget, until someone residing in the White House has the courage (and congressional majority) to start a draw down. I hope that person comes along soon, but I'm not optimistic. I don't think it's impossible; dust off Eisenhower's farewell address, tell the people where the money would go instead (health care, infrastructure, tax cuts), then sit back and watch the proponents of the war machine as they attempt to defend sinking almost 70% of income taxes into weapons and troops. But whoever decides to tackle it must realize that it's a signature issue that will dominate their administration's agenda. It's four-year fight worth having though, the sooner the better.