Money for the Wrong Something (Annotated)

SIDEBAR

Comment by Patrice Greanville

Among the many idiocies and crimes that Trump has already committed in his short tenure, all with the tacit or active support of Democrats, the increase of $54 bn on the official Pentagon budget, already a bloated infamy, must count as one of his most eloquent signatures. This grotesque and clearly unneeded addition to the Orwellian-named official "defense" budget (obviously only a fraction of what the US really spends for global imperial defense and mostly offense, as the US is known for having  numerous secret accounts channeling money and resources through various agencies and cutouts to what can only be defined as "military" or "war" operations against other nations) prompted  criticism from liberals, but this criticism remained carefully constrained  to their usual Never Trumper groove, neglecting mention of the Democrats' complicity in such matters. As part of the liberal pack, Mother Jones also commented on the topic. This article by Dave Gilson (March 1, 2017) is a good exposition of Trump's rank pandering to the MIC, from which I  have excerpted the following:

Why Trump’s Military Budget Boost Doesn’t Add Up

The Pentagon is spending more than it did in Vietnam. But here’s another $54 billion.

Trump campaigned on a promise to increase the Pentagon’s budget and reverse the Obama administration’s alleged “hollowing out” of the military. Yet a look at the numbers shows that while military spending has been decreasing due to bipartisan budget caps and the drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defense Department is still getting more money than it has at any time since the end of World War II. Its 2016 budget was more than $600 billion. In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, it was $569 billion (in current dollars).

And while Trump says increased military spending will reassert America’s strength, the United States already is the world’s 800-pound gorilla. In 2015, it was responsible for more than one third of all military spending on the planet. China and Russia, the United States’ main military competitors, don’t even come close.

While $54 billion would represent a more than 10 percent increase in the base military budget (which doesn’t include the extra money it receives for overseas operations), it’s massive compared to what the federal government spends on many social, science, environmental, and cultural programs—some of which could be on the chopping block. The Trump administration has reportedly been eyeing the National Endowment of the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for elimination and privatization, respectively. The combined budgets of those two agencies was $593 million in 2016—or 0.98 percent of all defense spending.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s books are such a mess that it has never been audited, and the Government Accountability Office has repeatedly (though politely) criticized it for its “long-standing financial management deficiencies.” Even as Trump talks about shaking things up in Washington, DC, his budget plans reveal that he won’t challenge a costly budgetary tradition: giving the Pentagon a pass.

It should be noted that while Gilson properly decries the cuts to the EPA, for example, and the possible attacks on public broadcasting, already sbstantially hobbled by stingy budgets and increasing reliance on rightwing billionaires and megacorporations, equal tears do not apply to other departments such as State and USAID, often far more engaged in advancing imperialist designs than their supposedly harmless mandates.
—PG