The Sky Will Fall if Pentagon Budget Cut

With sequestration of funds on the horizon, the Pentagon's apologists are lobbying hard for exempting the military from the $55 billion in automatic budget cuts for all government spending set to begin in 2013. The $1 trillion reduction in defense spending has war mongers gasping for breath already. Defense Secretary Panetta said the military spending cuts over a decade would result in the smallest number of ships since 1915, the smallest army since 1940 and the smallest Air Force in its history as a separate service. Is that a bad thing? US Person does not think so, since we have an economy that needs rebuilding to be more energy efficient, less polluting, and employ more people. The reduction is large, but in the perspective of a $700 billion annual operation, it is not too large. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone consume $115 billion; so in the big picture, a $100 billion cut per year over 10 is hardly a pacifist's dream. Let's look at the charts:

While the absolute size of the Pentagon's budget may decrease as a percentage of GDP the chart hides the fact that the level of spending on the US military has expanded in recent years as this charts shows in 2010 constant dollars :

Even with the proposed cuts in spending the US military complex will still consume 3 to 4% of our national product because the reductions are expected to come from increases in the absolute size of future Pentagon budgets. As this chart shows, the baseline budget (ex war appropriations) will actually grow through FY2017:

This modest reduction in force size--it would still be overwhelmingly the world's largest military--will not stop the military-industrial minions from fighting for every last dollar they can squeeze from Congress.  Their favorite bludgeon is: military spending creates jobs. That is undeniable, but at what cost to America?

The Pentagon has spent more on research and development than any other government entity on Earth since the Second World War. Some of that has proved very valuable to the rest of the nation's economy. Jet aircraft, developed for the military, are now a commonplace mode of transportation. The Internet as we know it was incubated for 35 years by Pentagon R&D. No profit company could have afforded such a long-term investment without return. Equally undisputed is the fact that the Pentagon is wasteful. Fully one-fourth of its service contracts put out for bid in 2010 were awarded to a single bidder. Cost overruns in 2009-10 reached $70 billion, or the size of the State Department's foreign affairs budget for the same period. The F-22 Raptor, the most advanced operational US jet fighter, was built at a per unit cost of about $200 million each*. The jet has been grounded and is still operationally restricted for oxygen system problems that will require an expensive fleet retrofit.  The expensive fighter has never been tested in combat.  Robert Pollin, an economist writing in the Nation says for every $1 billion spent on the military, 11,200 jobs are created within the US economy. That same amount spent on clean energy development would create 16,800 jobs.  It is time for America to get the economy off the military joy juice and get to work creating a healthier, more peaceful future for the planet.

*Early estimates were headlined at a bargain $140 million each. GAO says the cost of the jet is more like $415 million each while an industry source says the last F-22s produced cost about half that much. The production run was limited to 188 due to program cost overruns.