Budget Hypocrisy

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth these days about the federal budget deficit and the climbing national debt.  I'm no economist.  I know that some economists worry a lot about the national debt and others worry about it not at all.  I have no idea who is right, and I don't think they do either; but I do know this.  Politicians of both major political parties are appalling hypocrites when they complain about the deficit and the national debt and when they make their insignificant proposals for dealing with it.  The reason that they are hypocrites is that none of them, not one that I know of, mentions the role the US military budget plays in creating the deficit and the debt.  Unless the military budget is considered, no proposal to reduce the deficit and the debt can possibly do anything significantly to reduce either.

According to the web site warresisters.org, spending for our current military and expenditures for retired military plus interest on the military's portion of the national debt account for 54% of total federal expenditures.  That spending amounted to almost 700 billion dollars in 2009 and is going up from there.  The US military budget makes up 46.5% of all global military spending, according to the web site globalissues.org.  The country with the next largest percentage of global military spending is China with 6.6% of total spending.  We thus spend seven times as much on our military as the next largest military spender, and we spend almost as much as the rest of the world combined.

Yet for politicians of both political parties, and for most of the American public, this massive expenditure on our military is a sacred cow.  No politician can really do more than propose eliminating "waste" as a way to reduce it.  Certainly no politician can propose the only sane thing, namely, the withdrawal of our military from the parts of the world for which there is no reasonable justification for having them there (Germany, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many others) and transforming it into a truly defensive force rather than the instrument for projecting American imperial power around the world that it is today.

So the next time you hear a politician wailing about the deficit and the national debt but not proposing significantly to pare down our military spending, be suspicious.  Be very suspicious.  That politician, be he Democrat, Republican, or something else, is a hypocrite.  She is playing to your emotions but is not being serious about truly reducing government spending.