Our money for their military

[IndianaGreen]

Our money for their military

Jad Abdallah, a member of the Campus Antiwar Network at Hunter College, described how budget cuts in the City University of New York system are connected to the Pentagon budget at a campus forum in November.

December 4, 2009

I'VE ALWAYS heard that America is the richest country in the world, and I'm glad to know that this is true, because we don't actually see most of our money.

About 51 percent of the federal budget goes to defense. And this isn't defense like the word sounds like, either. About 34 percent of those defense costs go toward maintaining our so-called "global posture." This means maintaining a huge web of about 800 overseas military bases and installations, stuck like big, expensive thumbtacks in almost every country on the map--as well as paying for two wars and numerous smaller conflicts the U.S. is involved in.

The U.S. government spends about as much on the military as the rest of the world combined; we outspend our closest rival, China, by 10 times.

You may have heard of our black budgets for defense and spy agencies--its basically free money given to the military, which they just decide how to spend themselves. Let me assure you, there is nothing like this in education or health care. The military black budget pulled down $50 billion last year; it's about equal to the whole military budgets of France or Britain or Japan.

As for the wars, the Congressional Research Service reports that Congress has directly approved about a trillion dollars for the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other operations associated with the war on terror.

All this would be a pretty heavy economic burden even without a recession. And I think in hard times like these, America should do what any family does, and take a good look at what we're doing with the money we do have.

http://socialistworker.org/2009/12/04/our-money-for-their-military