On April 15, large, angry and some­what wacky crowds of Repub­li­can-backed and Fox News-sup­port­ed ​“tea par­ty” pro­test­ers joined the usu­al groups of more sedate and earnest peace activists to demon­strate against Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s pro­posed 2010 budget

A Lockheed Martin machinist can’t become a social studies teacher overnight, but transitioning people from military production to more useful sectors of the economy is not rocket science.

Whether they were mad about deficit spend­ing and high tax­es or mil­i­tary spend­ing, Obama’s bud­get of $3.55 tril­lion is a lot of money.

Much of those tril­lions are ori­ent­ed toward try­ing to fix the prob­lems of almost a decade of cor­po­ra­tions-can-do-no-wrong profli­ga­cy. There is a lot to applaud in the bud­get, like increased spend­ing on health­care, edu­ca­tion and devel­op­ing sus­tain­able ener­gy. But there are still huge mil­i­tary out­lays. Obama’s first Depart­ment of Defense bud­get requests $534 bil­lion in spend­ing, con­tin­u­ing a decade-long trend of unin­ter­rupt­ed increas­es. (Indeed, under Bush, the Pentagon’s base­line bud­get rose by 82 per­cent between FY 2002 and FY 2009, adjust­ed for infla­tion.) On April 6, Defense Sec­re­tary Robert Gates announced the detailed bud­get with a small bit of fan­fare, declar­ing that his bud­get is intend­ed to ​“reshape the pri­or­i­ties of America’s defense estab­lish­ment,” and that his rec­om­men­da­tions will ​“pro­found­ly reform how this depart­ment does business.”

Devil’s in the details

Despite those buzzy action words, Gates’ announce­ment was pret­ty cut and dry – a white-haired man read­ing from a sheaf of paper and respond­ing to ques­tions. For the most part, the cuts he pro­posed were not dra­mat­ic in that they were ​“bud­get neu­tral.” Sav­ings from decid­ing not to order any more F‑22 Rap­tors goes towards pro­duc­tion of the F‑35 Joint Strike Fight­er. There is (maybe) one few­er DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroy­er, but no change in fund­ing for the Vir­ginia Class attack submarine.

There were some actu­al cuts to big tick­et items. Star Wars mis­sile defense pro­grams were cut by $1.4 bil­lion, retain­ing more than $9 bil­lion a year in spend­ing on what is left of Reagan’s fan­tas­tic promise to ren­der nuclear weapons ​“impo­tent and obso­lete.” The Army’s Future Com­bat Sys­tem (FCS) – the trou­bled sys­tem of sys­tems designed to link togeth­er armed sol­diers, robot­ic sen­sors and com­bat vehi­cles with a sophis­ti­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work – will be cut by $770 mil­lion, as Gates axes the vehi­cle com­po­nent. Voic­ing his frus­tra­tion about cost over-runs and set­backs, Gates did raise the specter of can­ning the whole $87 bil­lion pro­gram if sig­nif­i­cant restruc­tur­ing was not successful.

Look­ing care­ful­ly at the Pen­ta­gon bud­get, Miri­am Pem­ber­ton, a mil­i­tary bud­get expert with the Insti­tute for Pol­i­cy Stud­ies, esti­mates that the pro­pos­als shave between $8.6 and $10.3 bil­lion from weapons pro­cure­ment funds. If those cuts can be sus­tained, and if whole pro­grams like FCS are can­celed, the sav­ings could total $98 bil­lion even­tu­al­ly. That would actu­al­ly edge us towards the sweep­ing rhetoric that accom­pa­nied the announcement.

Con­gress up in arms

But between here and there is a hornet’s nest of Con­gres­sion­al parochial­ism, with Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans lin­ing up behind their friend­ly neigh­bor­hood mil­i­tary con­trac­tor and pre­dict­ing fun­da­men­tal com­pro­mis­es to our nation­al secu­ri­ty as a result of these cuts. Sen. James Inhofe (R‑Okla.), called Gates’ bud­get the ​“dis­arm­ing of Amer­i­ca.” The axed vehi­cle in the FCS was sup­posed to be par­tial­ly built in Okla­homa. Inhofe received $121,700 in defense indus­try cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions in the 2007 – 2008 elec­tion cycle.

Sen. Sax­by Cham­b­liss (R‑Ga.) accus­es Gates of being ​“will­ing to sac­ri­fice the lives of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary men and women for the sake of domes­tic pro­grams favored by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma.” Parts for the F‑22 Rap­tor are built in Geor­gia. Cham­b­liss received $140,300 in cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions from the defense indus­try in the 2008 cycle.

Six sen­a­tors sent Sec­re­tary Gates a let­ter protest­ing the pro­posed mis­sile defense cuts and pre­dict­ing they ​“could under­mine our emerg­ing mis­sile defense capa­bil­i­ties to pro­tect the Unit­ed States against a grow­ing threat.” Togeth­er, the sen­a­tors received more than $855,000 from the defense indus­try in the 2008 cycle.

All of these protest­ing mem­bers of Con­gress cite the jobs sup­port­ed by weapons pro­grams. But accord­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts’ Polit­i­cal Econ­o­my Research Insti­tute, an invest­ment of $1 bil­lion in defense cre­ates 8,555 jobs and $564.5 mil­lion wages and ben­e­fits. That same amount, invest­ed in edu­ca­tion, cre­ates 17,687 jobs and $1.3 bil­lion in wages and ben­e­fits. A Lock­heed Mar­tin machin­ist can’t become a social stud­ies teacher overnight, but tran­si­tion­ing peo­ple from mil­i­tary pro­duc­tion to more use­ful sec­tors of the econ­o­my is not rock­et sci­ence, and the ben­e­fits are lasting.

GWOT becomes ​ ‘ Over­seas Con­tin­gency Operations’

Not only is this bud­get larg­er than the Bush administration’s last bud­get; it is just part of the pic­ture. It does not include the full costs of ongo­ing wars. At the end of March the Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that the Defense Department’s office of secu­ri­ty review sent a memo to Pen­ta­gon employ­ees say­ing, ​“this admin­is­tra­tion prefers to avoid using the term ​‘Long War’ or ​‘Glob­al War on Ter­ror’ [GWOT.] Please use ​‘Over­seas Con­tin­gency Oper­a­tion.’ ” Mem­bers of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion quick­ly fell in line, with Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get (OMB) Direc­tor Peter Orszag win­ning the prize for using it most often. But what­ev­er one calls it, it is expensive.

As of Octo­ber last year, total costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan totaled $864 bil­lion. Now it is Pres­i­dent Obama’s turn to add to that num­ber. In Obama’s first and – he insists in the OMB release – last ​“planned war sup­ple­men­tal” before these ​“costs are account­ed for in the bud­get” the White House is request­ing $83.4 bil­lion for ongo­ing mil­i­tary, diplo­mat­ic and intel­li­gence oper­a­tions. Of this, $75.5 bil­lion is for costs relat­ed to mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and intel­li­gence activ­i­ties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Added into this mix are funds for four more F‑22 Rap­tors (which extends the life of the weapons pro­gram that Sec­re­tary Gates just axed to save mon­ey). The rest – $7.1 bil­lion – is allo­cat­ed for inter­na­tion­al affairs and sta­bi­liza­tion activ­i­ties in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the globe, includ­ing eco­nom­ic assis­tance to Geor­gia, counter-nar­cotics pro­grams in Mex­i­co, secu­ri­ty assis­tance in Lebanon and many oth­er bud­get lines.

Once passed, Obama’s war sup­ple­men­tal will bring the total cost of ​“over­seas con­tin­gency oper­a­tions” since Pres­i­dent Bush’s Octo­ber 7, 2001, inva­sion of Afghanistan to $947 billion.

While it is a pos­i­tive move to bring war fund­ing into the bud­get rou­tine, this does not mean the Unit­ed States will stop spend­ing bil­lions a month any time soon. Mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Afghanistan – where Oba­ma is surg­ing U.S. forces – have so far cost more than $170 bil­lion, an aver­age of more than $20 bil­lion per year. Spend­ing will rise sig­nif­i­cant­ly as the Unit­ed States sends more troops and attends more to the train­ing of Afghan secu­ri­ty forces. Mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic aid to Pak­istan is slat­ed to sharply increase and addi­tion­al civil­ian devel­op­ment aid to Afghanistan will be a cru­cial part of the mix as well. These will be long-term efforts, not the work of a year, or two years, or even five years.

Then there is Iraq, where Oba­ma has pledged to respon­si­bly end the war. But, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, sav­ings gen­er­at­ed by reduc­tions in U.S. forces in Iraq are unlike­ly to be sig­nif­i­cant, at least for the next few years. The planned reduc­tions are fair­ly grad­ual. Even after the end of 2011 we may leave a resid­ual force of 50,000 or more mil­i­tary per­son­nel, along with an expand­ed con­tin­gent to train and equip the Iraqi armed forces.

In short, under Oba­ma, Pen­ta­gon spend­ing con­tin­ues to be out of control.

Tax­pay­ers yet unborn, gen­er­a­tions of them, will be on the hook for the near­ly $3 tril­lion – the amount bor­rowed plus inter­est to finance war oper­a­tions over the last decade. Until now, most peo­ple bare­ly noticed the dol­lar cost because it was on the nation­al cred­it card. But whether they tossed tea or piled pen­nies or filled out forms in April, the Amer­i­can peo­ple are begin­ning to notice that the bills are com­ing due.

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