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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (2660)	2/5/2002 10:39:22 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Bush Seeks Huge $379 Billion Military Budget Monday February 4 2:59 PM ET By Charles Aldinger WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) exhorted Congress on Monday to arm the U.S. military for a new kind of war against terrorist groups and hostile nations with a $379 billion budget next year, urging the biggest Pentagon (news - web sites) increase in 21 years. Despite controversy over Bush's missile defense plan, U.S. officials said Congress was likely to agree to much of the $48 billion rise following the Sept. 11 attacks on America and a decade of cuts after the end of the Cold War. The U.S. defense budget already is higher than the total of all the next 15 biggest military spenders, including Russia, China and major NATO (news - web sites) allies. Although much of the new funds go to improving military living conditions and pay, there was a new emphasis on building up precision weapons, unmanned planes and new tactical fighter aircraft. Bush said the aim was to build a ``more agile and mobile'' force to deploy against a new enemy, terrorist groups and states backing them which are developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. ``We're unified in Washington on winning this (terrorism) war. One way to express our unity is for Congress to set the military budget -- the defense of the United States -- as a number one priority and fully fund my request,'' Bush told a cheering crowd at Elgin Air Force Base in Florida. DRONES AND LASERS Bush's projections for the next five years would raise defense spending by $120 billion to $451 billion by 2007 at a time when federal deficits are expected to grow with tax cuts. The budget devoted $29 billion to Bush's war on terrorism and $9 billion to unconventional arms like pilotless spy planes carrying missiles and laser communications system for troops. ``This historic moment, this great opportunity to fight for freedom and to promote the peace for the long term requires a strong military, and we must keep it strong with new investments in equipment and ... by attracting and retaining the best and the brightest in our country,'' Bush said. Chairman Bob Stump of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee said Bush's plan marks the first time in two decades that the U.S. budget ``has been constructed around the number one priority of the federal government -- providing for the national security.'' But he complained even the $48 billion requested increase is ``not nearly enough to repair the damage done by decades of enormous maintenance, operations, and training shortfalls.'' The budget would resupply the Air Force with thousands of satellite-guided bombs used in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and convert four big Cold War submarines built to fire long-range nuclear missiles to instead launch dozens of conventional cruise missiles. The one-year proposed increase of 12 percent after allowing for inflation would be the biggest percentage boost in the military budget since President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) began an arms build-up in the 1980s that left the Soviet Union broken. 'THE UNKNOWN, UNCERTAIN, UNEXPECTED' Under the Pentagon projections, defense spending could rise to $387.9 billion in 2004, $408.8 billion in 2005, $429.6 billion in 2006 and $451.4 billion in 2007. Bush's plan reflected Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's call this week for more spending on high-tech weapons and innovative post-Cold War strategy to protect the nation from ''the unknown, the uncertain, the unseen and the unexpected.'' Bush and Congress have agreed the military must acquire new arms, technologies and strategies to fight ``terrorists'' such as the anti-Western al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), blamed by the United States for attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in Washington and New York. A senior defense official said the anti-terror war was costing the United States $1.8 billion a month conservatively, most of that in Afghanistan. The $379.3 billion Pentagon budget includes Bush's proposal for a $10 billion emergency fund to fight terrorism but not $15.6 billion for Energy Department supervision over the nation's arsenal of more than 6,000 nuclear warheads. Bush's budget includes $7.8 billion for missile defense, a program that has been condemned by Russia, China and many U.S. allies who fear it would undermine existing arms controls. The figure is unchanged from the current year, although Bush has stressed his total commitment to building such a system. Critics of the testing program to shoot down missiles from ''rogue'' states are concerned over a Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites) estimate this week which the critics said showed the program could cost $238 billion over the next 15-25 years. But a CBO spokeswoman said her agency's report was misinterpreted. The report specifically did not provide a grand total charge for a multi-layered missile defense system because there are so many variables, the spokeswoman said. The new budget would increase the number of unmanned ''Predator'' and high-flying ``Global Hawk'' spy aircraft, built respectively by General Atomics of San Diego and Northrop Grumman Corp, and put remote-controlled missiles on more of the Predators. The Pentagon lost several Predators in accidents in Afghanistan. dailynews.yahoo.com

To: Mephisto who wrote (2660)	2/5/2002 10:44:40 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 15516

The Axis-of-Inefficiency Budget Editorial The New York Times February 5, 2002 Budget President Bush's proposed $2.1 trillion budget embraces the word "security" at every turn. It provides more spending for military security and domestic security and more tax cuts for "economic security." But the budget undermines the security of the nation's social safety net and the government's ability to carry out some of its basic responsibilities over the next two decades. It jeopardizes the future of Social Security and Medicare, whose trust funds would be siphoned away to underwrite outmoded military projects and tax reductions favoring the rich. The budget embodies a divisive agenda for which Mr. Bush has no mandate, in spite of his popularity. For weeks the administration has cleverly leaked news about a handful of domestic programs like family nutrition, health research and food stamps that were targeted for spending increases. But the budget the administration presented yesterday revealed that everything outside these few programs was up for assault. According to Mitchell Daniels, the budget director, the administration is targeting only inefficient programs. The cuts, he insists, are not aimed at hobbling job training, environmental programs or labor safety — although those are some of the areas that will suffer. The administration, he says, is simply trying to do away with bad management. Mr. Daniels has created a virtual axis of inefficiency, and declared war on it. It is hard to accept Mr. Daniels's sincerity when the defense budget remains packed with cold- war-era projects that have no business in the kind of modern, high-tech military the Bush administration wants to create. The budget will lock in billions of dollars in future spending for outmoded technology like the 70-ton Crusader howitzer and the F-22 jet fighter. Apparently the only federal programs that can be inefficient are the ones the Republican Party's right wing doesn't like. The most discouraging part of the new budget is the way it disguises the true cost of its tax cuts with accounting gimmicks and arbitrary expiration dates. Almost incredibly, Mr. Bush wants to accelerate and make permanent previously enacted tax cuts and add new tax cuts on top of them. He says that his actions would cost more than $600 billion over the next 10 years, but without the gimmicks they would cost more than $1 trillion. The Bush budget is a road map toward a different kind of American society, in which the government no longer taxes the rich to aid the poor, and in fact does very little but protect the nation from foreign enemies. If the budget is adopted as proposed, over the next decade the increasing cost of the tax cuts will drain the treasury while the rapidly rising price tag of unnecessary military projects will make up a larger and larger piece of what is left. Virtually everyone supports spending as much money as it takes to fight the war on terrorism at home and abroad. But national security does not require new corporate tax write-offs or contracting for a new fighter plane designed primarily for cold- war-era dogfights. Mr. Bush is using the anti-terrorism campaign to disguise an ideological agenda that has nothing to do with domestic defense or battling terrorism abroad. The budget discontinues the tradition of making 10-year projections into the future, possibly because the administration does not want the American people to see where the road is heading. One of the many pieces of this budget that the public would never accept if consulted is the harm it does to the future of Medicare and Social Security. When asked yesterday to address charges that the administration was not leaving enough money to keep Medicare and Social Security solvent, Mr. Daniels said both were heading toward insolvency anyway. His policies seemed intent on starving the federal government of money to save them so that they can be "fixed" by PRIVATIZING THEM IN WAYS THAT FAVOR THE WELL-TO-DO. The budget now goes to Congress, where it needs to be rethought and stripped of its gimmicks disguising the true cost of what it wants to do. nytimes.com