SOMETHING TO HAVE A TAX REVOLT ABOUT: WAR RACKETS DEPT. OUT OF CONTROL!
MSI,
Speaking of revolting, while I've had the 'puter fired up today, I've only seen our War Rackets Department piss away $270,611,345. In about six hours. And $12,000,000 just in the time it took me to edit this post!
businessleaders.org
Don't look at this counter with a headache. OUCH!
Oh yeah, there a serious point to this, here's the intro piece:
businessleaders.org
"America should not be in a arms race with itself," - Lawrence Korb.
Highlights from the Lawrence Korb authored URL above:
Defense Budget Myths
These misleading assumptions about defense spending may be placed into ten categories.
Half truth one - defense spending should be increased because defense consumes the smallest portion of the GDP and the smallest percentage of the overall federal budget since before Pearl Harbor
Indeed this is an argument advanced by Governor Bush in his September 23, 1997 speech at the Citadel and has also been put forward by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and former Army Chief of Staff, Dennis Reimer. While this statement is true as far as it goes, it tells us more about the tremendous growth of our economy since World War II, as well as the rising cost of health care, and the aging of our population than it does about our national security situation. In 1940, American GDP was $96.5 billion or about $1.2 trillion in today’s dollars. That compares with a GDP of more than $8.7 trillion in 1999. As Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute notes, in effect, one percent of GDP today means eight times as much spending as 1940. Moreover, the implication of this statement is that the U.S. military of 2000 is in as bad a shape as it was in 1940. Sixty years ago the U.S. military was ranked 16th in the world, between Portugal and Romania, was one-tenth the size of Germany’s and half the size of Japan’s, and accounted for only 1.6 percent of the world’s military personnel. Finally, if such a ridiculous criterion were applied to the average American’s daily life, it would mean that people should upgrade their home security system every time they get a pay raise.
Half truth two - the defense budget has been reduced over the past decade because of the need to reduce the budget deficit, and now that the federal budget has a hefty surplus, defense spending should be increased.
[[RGD-Note: This was written in 2000, the budget situation has deteriorated, thanks to Bush's manipulation to help out his bribers in the banking industry.]]
It is true that the desire of Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton and of the majority in Congress to reduce the federal budget led them to take a hard look at defense spending. However, the fact of the matter is that the defense budget was reduced from the lofty levels of the Reagan years primarily because the Cold War ended, the Soviet Empire collapsed, and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Indeed that was President Reagan’s plan. Spend a great deal in the short term in order to save a lot in the long term when the Cold War ended. Russian defense expenditures today are 85 percent less than that of the Soviet Union! [[RGD- And we need an increase?? We're nuts!]] Moreover, during the last decade, the U.S. share of the world’s military expenditures has risen above one-third. Today the U.S. spends nearly three times as much on defense as all its potential enemies combined. The total combined defense expenditures in 1999 of the rogue states that the Pentagon worries about, i.e. Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba and Syria was $13.8 billion, or about four percent of the U.S. defense budget.[[RGD - Some 'axis of evil', more like a rounding error!]] The U.S. and its allies account for 65 percent of the world’s total military expenditures.
Half truth three - defense spending should be increased because the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest military leaders, point out that there is a $150 billion gap between defense plans and programs or between their defense strategy and resources.
The fact of the matter is that since the end of World War II, the Chiefs have never been satisfied with even very generous defense budgets. By historical standards the alleged $150 billion gap is comparatively small. Even in the halcyon days of the Reagan buildup, when the defense budget doubled in four years, the nation’s military leaders complained about the gap which they then estimated to be about $500 billion. Had we listened to the Chiefs during the Cold War, this nation would have spent several trillion dollars more than it did to prevail in that conflict by throwing large sums of money at all sorts of nonexistent gaps, for example, bomber gaps and missile gaps. [[RGD - Sound like a credibility gap, more than anything else!]]
Half truth four - the United States cannot be a great power unless it continues to embrace the two war strategy, i.e. to be able to conduct two major regional conflicts simultaneously, which is the official policy of the Clinton Administration.
Such a position defies both logic and history. When the United States was bogged down in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf, no other nation took advantage of that fact by threatening U.S. vital interests elsewhere in the world. Even if the U.S. were temporarily unprepared to engage fully in a second regional conflict, the potential aggressor would have to be aware that the U.S. would eventually be able to bring awesome military power against it. Beginning with the Nixon administration in 1969, through the end of the Cold War, the U.S. was a great power and prevailed against the Soviet Empire even though it had only a one and one half war strategy. Finally, both bipartisan groups, which were established by the Congress to examine defense policies since the end of the Cold War, the National Defense Panel and the National Security Strategy Group, have rejected the two war strategy as simply a justification for larger forces.
Half truth five - Sending our troops into peacekeeping operations like Bosnia has diverted large sums of money from core defense functions and has undermined our ability to carry out the two war strategy.
The fact of the matter is that peacekeeping operations have consumed less than two percent of the defense budget during the Clinton Administration. Moreover, only 10,000 U.S. troops out of a total force of 2.3 million, are currently involved in these small scale contingencies. Finally, the threat from regional rogues has been wildly overestimated, and is rapidly declining. For example, as Clinton’s first Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, pointed out, in deciding how many troops the U.S. would need to prevail on the Korean Peninsula, the Joint Chiefs of Staff assume a North Korean fighting person is as effective as an American and 25 percent more effective than a South Korean. According to the Chiefs, the U.S. would have to send more Americans to Korea today than it did in 1950 when there was no South Korean military to speak of and one million Chinese came to the aid of North Korea.
Half truth six - the Pentagon needs more money because it is facing an investment shortfall. According to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs, the Pentagon has needed to spend $60 billion a year for purchasing new equipment since 1995 to keep its forces modernized.
It is true that during the past five years, the Pentagon has spent less than $50 billion on average and did not reach the $60 billion level until the current budget. But this $60 billion figure has the U.S. military in an arms race with itself. For example, the $60 billion target assumes that DOD must replace its current generation of tactical aircraft, the F-16, the F-15, the F-14, and F/A - 18 C/D, with the newer, more sophisticated and much more expensive, F-22, F/A - 18 E/F, even though the current aircraft are already the best in the world. Similarly, the Pentagon claims it needs a new generation of submarines (SSN – 21 or new Attack Submarines) even though the current generation , the SSN - 688’s, are the best in the world, with many years of useful life left, and with no next generation Soviet submarine to threaten it. Moreover, the Pentagon assumes that the Army needs to continue upgrading its M1A1 tanks and buying a new heavy artillery piece (the Crusader) even though its divisions are already too heavy to be moved quickly around the globe. An Army mechanized division is currently 49 percent heavier than it was a decade ago. Finally, this $60 billion benchmark ignores the fact that the current U.S. procurement budget is 40 percent more than all of our allies combined, 75 percent more than either Russia or China, and nine times greater than that of Iraq and North Korea together.
Half truth seven - the readiness of our armed forces is declining because we are not spending enough on operations and maintenance (O&M), the surrogate account for readiness.
The fact of the matter is that in FY 2000, real O&M spending per capita, is 10 percent higher than it was at the height of the Reagan build-up and exceeds $100 billion for an active duty force of 1.36 million. Moreover, the services are still using the same readiness criteria as they did during the Cold War to justify their case for additional expenditures in this area. For example, if the mission-capable rates of tactical aircraft have declined by five or even ten percentage points compared to 1985, as some have claimed, is that a problem? Not unless the North Korean military or the Iraqi military is 90 to 95 percent as capable as the Soviet military. Or if an Army tank unit drives only 500 miles a year instead of the recommended 800, how can that be a problem if none of our potential adversaries is even driving 100? Moreover, it is not clear that throwing money at the O&M account will actually increase readiness. In the first Reagan Administration, despite the largest peacetime buildup in history, readiness rates for Army and Air Force units actually dropped between 1980 and 1984.
Half truth eight - the services are failing to meet their recruiting goals even though they have lowered the quality standards they maintained in the 1980s.
The fact of the matter is that today all the armed services have a higher percentage of high quality accessions (high school graduates and people scoring average or above average on the AFQT or armed forces qualifications test) than at any time during the Reagan years. For example a decade ago, 60 percent of the Navy’s recruits had a high school diploma, 58 percent scored above average on the AFQT, and 11 percent were below average. In 1999, 95 percent of the Navy’s enlistees had high school diplomas and 66 percent were above average. There are no category IVs, or below average scorers, allowed to join the Navy today. The situation is similar in the other services. If the services used the same quality standards they used in building the force that performed so well in the Persian Gulf, or that supported the Reagan buildup, the military could meet its recruitment goals much more easily, even in this robust economy.
Half truth nine - the services are having retention problems because a much higher percentage of the force is deployed overseas than during the Cold War
Some have claimed that the military has been deployed once every nine weeks in the last decade. The fact of the matter is that in the 1980s over 500,000 (or 25 percent) people out of an active duty force of 2.1 million were deployed outside the United States. Today that number is about 230,000 or 15 percent of an active force of 1.36 million. A decade ago, only 58 percent of the active Army was in the U.S. Today that figure is over 75 percent. Sailors today spend about the same amount of time at sea as they did a decade ago. The net effect of long or hostile duty on retention is actually positive for the Army and Marines and statistically insignificant for the Navy and Air Force.
Of the 235,000 people deployed outside the U.S. today, 200,000 of them are on routine deployments in Europe and Asia. That means that 35,000 men and women, out of the remaining 1.1 million or two percent of the active force not routinely deployed to Europe and Asia, are available in places like the Balkans and the Persian Gulf, or on unplanned deployments. This is hardly a demanding requirement and if this minimal requirement is causing problems for selected units, they should be solved by good management, not spending more money. For example, most of the units that regularly go on unplanned deployments, like Army Civil Affairs Brigades or Air Force Search and Rescue Units, should be in the active component not in the reserves as they are now. Moreover, when counting the number of these operations the military makes no distinction between sending a handful of people to Southeast Asia for a few days to try to recover servicemen still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War or delivering a small amount of food to Africa from deploying thousands to the Balkans for several years. Finally, the Pentagon has used substantial numbers of the reserve components to handle part of these unexpected deployments. For example, of the 150,000 people who have served in Bosnia since 1995, over 30,000 have been reservists and over 10,000 of the 56,000 who have deployed to Kosovo are reservists.
Half truth ten - There is a pay gap between the military and civilian sectors and therefore, pay and benefits for all military people must be increased substantially.
This is what the Pentagon and the Congress did in the FY 2000 and 2001 budgets when they raised base pay by about nine percent across the board and increased the percentage of base pay a retiree would receive after 20 years from 40 to 50 percent. As evidence of the gap, proponents of a pay raise claim that the military suffers a 13 percent pay gap relative to the private sector and argue this has created problems such as the deploying Navy being short 15,000 people, 12,000 military people being on food stamps, and a severe pilot shortage in the Navy and the Air Force.
As Cindy Williams, former head of the Congressional Budget Office’s National Security Division has demonstrated, in reality there is no pay gap. The majority of the men and women in the armed services earn more than 75 percent of their civilian counterparts. An entering recruit with a high school diploma makes $22,000, while an officer earns $34,000. After 20 years, the salary of an enlisted man exceeds $50,000 while that of officers tops $100,000. In addition throughout their careers, military personnel are eligible for a wide variety of bonuses and receive a generous package of fringe benefits (free health care, generous non-contributory retirement). Moreover, there is no evidence to support the contention that restoring the retirement benefit to 50 percent after 20 years will have an impact on retention.
The consequences of the pay gap are also overblown. The fact is that the Navy is at or very near its authorized end strength. The problem is that the sailors are not in the correct place. Moreover, the fact that the Navy fell 6,892 short of its recruiting goals in 1998 should not have been surprising. The Navy actually recruited as many people in 1998 as it did in 1995 and 1996. The problem was that the Navy increased its numerical goal for 1998 by 15 percent over 1996 without making the corresponding increases in recruiters and advertising in a timely manner. For example, in 1998 the Navy had fewer recruiters than in 1996 and 1997 and the advertising budget for 1997 was below 1996 even without adjusting for inflation. An adequate number of recruiters and a robust advertising budget should go a long way toward curing the shortfall. Indeed with additional recruiters and more advertising the Navy actually met its recruiting goal in 1999.
Similarly, while it is true that some 12,000 military people are technically eligible for food stamps, as the Wall Street Journal has pointed out, the vast majority (60 percent) of them are individuals with large families in the lower ranks (E3 - E5) who live on base. Because they live on base in rent free quarters, they do not receive their housing allowance. If they lived off base or if their compensation were adjusted to reflect the fair market value of their housing, most of these military people would not be eligible for food stamps. Correcting for these distortions reduces the number to between 750 to 1,000, about 0.08% of the force.
Finally, it is true that the Air Force and the Navy are short some 2,000 pilots. But this is the result of two factors. In the first part of the 1990s, the military reduced the number of pilots it trained below what is needed to sustain an appropriate level. As Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Ryan has pointed out, “We made a terrible mistake six years ago when we reduced our pilot training to such a low level.” This accounts for about 80 percent of the shortage. Second, the remaining 20 percent of the shortfall is occurring because the civilian airlines are hiring in unprecedented numbers. There is no conceivable way that the military could match the compensation or lifestyle of a pilot for Delta, American or United. Doubling the pay and never deploying military pilots would still not match the compensation or lifestyle of civilian airline pilots. Training more pilots until 2003, when airline hiring is projected to slow down, will be more effective than just throwing more money at the problem.
None of this analysis is meant to indicate that the military does not face challenges. Indeed they do. But these challenges or problems cannot be dealt with by throwing more and more money at the Pentagon. Indeed, as Admiral William Owens, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the first Clinton Administration has argued, that would be the worst thing it does. It would justify the failure of the Pentagon to adjust to the end of the Cold War. The majority of the problems faced by the Pentagon are self-inflicted. In the decade of the 1990s, the Department of Defense conducted three reviews of its strategy and force structure: the Base Force of 1990; the Bottom Up Review of 1993; and the Quadrennial Defense Review of 1997.
Despite the fact that these reviews were conducted by three different Secretaries of Defense they did not make any fundamental changes. The force of 2000 is structurally little different than it was a decade ago. Although the force is somewhat smaller, it is in essence a “Cold War-Lite” force. The troops drive the same tanks, fly the same planes, and sail the same ships as they did in 1990. Moreover, they use the same procurement strategy and employ the same organizational and operational models. While such a development is understandable from a bureaucratic and political view, the fact of the matter is that it has given this nation the worst of all possible worlds. Not only do we spend more than is necessary on defense, we get far less than we should from what we spend. A true bottom up review that resulted in a realistic budget would give us a more effective defense at a greatly reduced cost. |
