  Tom Carsley Word count: 1706 (© 2002 Tom Carsley) Military spending: the Unchecked Bank Account By TOM CARSLEY None of us would spend our hard-earned money on a promise. Or a product that once we bought it, it turned out to be defective or incapable of the purpose it was bought for. Yet every year, after year our defense department and individual units do it. The Department of Defense pays contractors up front for the promise of newly developing equipment that is almost always late and at a higher cost that was originally given.
Every year in the last months before a new fiscal year units spend all the money left within their budgets to make sure that they get the same amount again. Whether they need the money or not. A perfect example of an over budget project is the new fighter plane, the F-22 Raptor. By December 2000 the aircraft was planned to have had 2,000 test hours flown so that the Air Force could make a decision on ordering more of the planes, yet by that time only 2 hours of test flying had been done. By August 2002 there is planned to have 3,757 test flight hours logged. So far only 831 hours have been flown.
Currently $63 billion dollars have been committed to this project. Can you even imagine this figure, $63,000,000,000? Personally I don’t spend $63 without thinking twice about it. That sum of money for a plane that has yet to be even properly tested, proven, or purchased. The Raptor is not alone in its’ price tag. The B-2 bomber has gone from costing $550 million to $2.2 billion. That is for each and every plane. Those are but two of the many classic examples of military spending gone wrong. Back in the 1980’s it was big news when it was learned what the military was paying for everyday items such as hammers, toilet seats, nuts and washers.
To this day the $250.00 airplane toilet sear is still a joke. At the time when the stories broke the officials and contractors tried to make a stand and justify the price tags as shipping and handling costs. No one was fooled. Contractors play a very large part in the price of the goods, as do politicians and the senior ranking generals within the ranks. For the contractors it is a matter of keeping the money flowing to their companies, no matter the means by which this is accomplished. Usually it means promising to build a factory or to spend large sums of money in a politician’s district. Or the promise of a high level position to the military representative on retirement from his or her post. For them it means out bidding each other, even if it means bidding to low and on a timeline promise that is impossible.
They know that they can appeal for more money and time later in Congress, and the politicians that work for them will vote in the companies’ favor. These companies push for the government to purchase things it does not need so as to keep the CEO’s well paid and the company trudging along the road of corruption. The politicians continue to vote approvingly of the spending because it will mean jobs for their constituents. For many areas the company may be the biggest employer and that most big dollar projects are worked from several different areas, causing more than one district to be affected if the flow of money is cut off. The biggest part of the argument, jobs lost as the affect of military cuts. This is not the case.
Most of the layoffs occur from divisions of the company not related to defense contracting. There is no incentive for companies to improve the nonmilitary products. Those items are subject to the flow of the market and consumer need, while the money from the DOD is an ever-flowing river of cash without end it seems. Moreover it has been shown that for every billion dollars spent on arms creates 25,000 jobs. If that same money had been spent in a way to enhance the populations well being such as health care it could create 47,000 jobs. If it had been spent in education it could create 41,000 jobs. Those are just jobs created from the government spending the tax money on improving itself. If it were to give the money back to the tax payer to spend on goods and services more jobs would be created and the economy would be in better shape.
Instead of large sums of money being spent on a few items that no one but the military will benefit from, there will be all that money placed back into the hands of those who earned it to spend it on things to improve their own lives and conditions. When people are paying fewer taxes, and they would be if there was not so much excessive spending in the DOD, they spend more money, keeping the dollar circulating. It takes about $50,000 of money spent to create the need for a new job position in the civilian sector, while the government spends over $70,000, most of which is used up in the paperwork involved in the process.
The generals all have a large stake in the contracting business. When it comes time for them to retire from service they want to sit on a board or to be the CEO of on of the companies they pushed contracts through for. They want to keep the contractors happy and are more than willing to ensure that their friends are treated well.
They are taken care of, free of charge, at least to them, the tax payers pick up the tab. Rides on military planes, ships, and free luxury hotel rooms are very common practice for generals and their contractor and political friends. All for the sake of keeping the dollars flowing to a select few and all involved are happy and well taken care of. You would think that people that dedicate their lives to the service of the United States would put the welfare of the people and government above their own desires for luxury and wealth.
It does not make any sense. For 2000 it is estimated that about $546.6 billion was spent directly and indirectly on the DOD. That is 41.3% of the total estimated budget of $1.3 trillion in the entire budget. The only other administration that receives more of the budget is health care. Interest on the national debt is in third place at 20%. With the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department come out lastly with less than 1% each of the budget.
The United States is the biggest spender when it comes down to military spending. Worldwide it takes a 37% bite out of the combined total military spending. Sixteen times larger than the combined totals of Cuba, Iran, Syria, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Libya. With that information, how can such a large budget be justified? The DOD says it needs to keep developing better weapons to stay ahead of all our current and potential enemies. But if they are not spending their own money on such research what weapons do we need to stay ahead of? The second point if we need to be so far ahead in technology, way have we been using the same aircraft and rifles for the nearly 40 years?
If they aren’t broke and can accomplish the goals, why replace them? For instance the F-15 has been called the best plane in the world, and is still far ahead of anything other countries, countries that do develop technology, have been able to create. So, why do we need the Raptor? Instead of spending billions of dollars on new and not always better systems, why not just replace equipment that is worn out with new equipment of the same type?
The best comparison is that you trade in your reliable low maintenance car for a sports car that is in the shop three weeks of every month. Why spend the money on something not being used? What should and desperately needs to be employed is an agency outside personal agenda direct benefit of the contracting system. Contractors need to be accountable for the price gouging and the failure to fulfill contracts as promised. There are plenty of watch dog groups out there that keep an eye on the government spending, either specifically as the military or for a wide number of agencies.
Such as Taxpayers for Common Sense (taxpayer.net), Taxpayers against Fraud (tax.org), Pork Buster Patrol (porkbuster.org). Yet they do not have the funding that the contractors do. There is no way to match it, and if you think about it, the contractors get the money to pad the way for more funding from the funding they received to begin with, a giant loop of ever increasing price tags that consumes without contributing. The U.S. military is a big machine that has been abused in recent years as the solver of the worlds’ problems. This is against our own constitution, which states the military is for the national defense. When was the last time the borders of this country were threatened? The lives of our sons and daughters should not be used to defend oil-producing countries or in stopping conflicts that have been raging for centuries between conflicting religions.
The current military is too big for the world. If the leadership would keep the DOD out of the rest of the world there could be great reduction in spending that would allow money to be spent elsewhere in promoting the growth of the nations well being. If needed, the machine can be turned back on as it has been in past conflicts. There has to come a time when the leadership realizes that the Cold War is over and that it is time to turn the focus in on addressing internal concerns. FCNL- issues we work on- military spending http://www.fcnl.org/issues/mil/sup/mil_taxsuprt.htm HOW GOVERNMENT SPENDS CREATES JOBS http://www.smart.net/~kaz/spending.html TAXPAYERS FOR COMMON SENSE http://www.taxpayer.net/TCS/wastebasket/nationalsecurity/4-13-01f-22.htm CURRENT BUDGET PERTENTAGES http://www.kowaldesign.com/budget/percentages.html THIRD WORLD TRAVELER EXCERPTED FROM THE BOOK "TAKE THE RICH OF WELFARE" BY MARK ZEPEZAUER AND ARTHUR NAIMAN. http://www.worldtraveler.com/Corporate_welfare/military_Fraud.html 
