[Infowarrior] - America's $1 Trillion National Security Budget

[Richard Forno]

America's $1 Trillion National Security Budget
Winslow T. Wheeler

http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/defense-budget/2014/americas-one-trillion-national-security-budget.html

The Pentagon's current leadership and most on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in Congress describe President Obama's 2015 defense budget request as painfully austere, if not dangerously  inadequate.  The defense trade press is full of statements from generals, admirals and the other politicians from both political parties that there is not nearly enough money available to buy adequate amounts of new hardware,  maintain current pay and benefits or provide even low amounts of training and equipment maintenance.  As a result, they are looking for ways to relieve the Pentagon from its penury.

Scarcity of money is not their problem.  Pentagon costs, taken together with other known national security expenses for 2015, will exceed $1 Trillion.  How can that be?  The trade press is full of statements about the Pentagon's $495.6 billion budget and how low that is.

There is much more than $495.6 billion in the budget for the Pentagon, and there are piles of national security spending outside the Pentagon-all of it as elemental for national security as any new aircraft and ships and the morale and well-being of our troops.

The table below details what a careful observer will find in President Obama's 2015 budget presentation materials.  The amounts for the Pentagon are well above the advertised $495.6 billion, and there are several non-Pentagon accounts that are clearly relevant.

The relevant data for 2014 is also presented for comparison, and the notations in the "Comments" column help explain the data. 

< -- >

To repeat, the problem is not scarcity of money.  The problem is how it is being spent.  We are getting very little defense--training, maintenance, hardware, and troops--for a gigantic amount of money.  By virtue of how they characterize $1 trillion dollars as penury, our national security leaders in the Pentagon and Congress are clearly incapable of dealing with the problem.

Our equipment is outrageously expensive and yet too much of it is a step backwards in effectiveness.  Since the mid-1990s Congress has bulldozed money into across-the-board pay raises, double pensions for many military retirees, significantly increased benefits for the survivors of World War Two veterans and much else that has much more to do with placating constituencies than addressing 21st century security problems. In addition, the Pentagon's civilian and military leadership has bloated itself to historically unprecedented levels of overhead.  Worse yet, none of them have even bothered to fundamentally understand the dimension of the problems because, under their tutelage, the Pentagon remains unaudited and un-auditable, which will remain the case even after it meets its decades overdue, and embarrassingly modest, financial management goals-which by the way, it will do no time soon.

One more time: the problem is not scarcity of money.

http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/defense-budget/2014/americas-one-trillion-national-security-budget.html

---
Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.