Washington, D.C. If you want to know what the federal government plans to do with the taxes you paid by April 15, 2008, you need to take a good look at the tables shown in the “Analytical Perspectives” book of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year (FY) 2009. All of our taxes went to the federal funds portion of the budget, not to the trust funds, such as Social Security and Medicare, which are raised and spent separately from income taxes. If we include the income for trust funds, the human needs portion of the budget will appear larger and the military portion smaller.
Projected federal funds for FY 2009 amount to $2,650 billion. Out of that total, only 46 percent go to the budget’s non-military segment while 54 percent, or $1,449 billion, are allotted for military purposes. Thirty-six percent of the total budget cover current military needs. Eighteen percent go for past military expenditures, of which roughly 20 percent represent veterans' benefits and 80 percent interest on debt incurred for past military operations in war and peace.
Additionally, we need to consider that not all military spending is done by the Department of Defense. Nuclear weapons come under the purview of the Department of Energy. Homeland Security, which includes the Coast Guard, and half of the expenditures of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration go for military applications.
According to a four-year study sponsored by the Brookings Institution, nuclear weapons have cost the United States at least $5.48 trillion since 1940. For most of that time, neither the Pentagon, nor the President, nor Congress seemed to have known precisely what was being spent for what.
The nation’s nuclear arms build-up represents about a third of all military spending and about one-tenth of all expenditures by the Federal Government from 1940 to 1996. Only non-nuclear defense programs and Social Security cost more. A former director of the Economic Policy and Analysis division of the Defense Department pointed out that the money spent on nuclear weapons and related environmental cleanup would buy 290 million automobiles. The editor of the Brookings study, however, explained that military policy planners have paid little attention to the costs of nuclear weapons because they were--and may still be--considered to give more “bang for the buck.''
The other huge military expense that is difficult to calculate is the operation of over 700 military bases worldwide. While we would certainly not allow any country to have bases in or near the Americas, we take it for granted that the 63 countries where we station troops should welcome our over 250,000 soldiers with open arms.
According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, U.S. military spending is equal to the military spending of the next highest fifteen countries combined, led by China, Russia, and Britain. While the United States accounts for 47 percent of the world’s total military spending, our share of the world's gross domestic product amounts only to about 21 percent. For people who believe the Bush administration’s exaggerations about the military threat of Iran and North Korea, it may be a relief to know that our military outspends Iran and North Korea by a ratio of 72 to 1.
President Bush routinely claims that our huge worldwide military presence and its cost are necessary to keep us Americans free, and that those who want us out, particularly Muslim societies, are simply “enemies of freedom.” As we look for a new president and a new Congress, we urgently need to reexamine what in our military build-up is truly necessary for our welfare and what is a waste of our national treasure.