129a5ea4   
   XPost: alt.alien.visitors, alt.alien.research, alt.astronomy   
   XPost: alt.conspiracy   
   From: garymatalucci@gmail.com   
      
   How Our Trillion-Dollar Empire Is the Cause of Our 'Deficit Problem' --   
   We could make the budget deficit disappear and fully fund Social   
   Security and Medicare without raising taxes, if we only outspend our   
   biggest military rival by threefold.   
      
   The United States spends more on its military and security services   
   than the rest of the world combined, yet in the midst of a major   
   debate over our fiscal situation, that enormous drain on our national   
   treasure isn't really "on the table" in any serious way. Obama's   
   deficit commission recommended cutting the Pentagon's purse, but the   
   thrust of its focus was on veterans' pensions and health-care --   
   rather than, say, maintaining costly bases to defend such imperiled   
   allies as Italy and Germany -- and the spending reductions were   
   largely symbolic relative to the level of bloat that plagues our   
   security budget.   
      
   One often hears that, in very rough terms, about a fifth of the   
   federal budget goes to national security, another fifth pays for   
   Social Security, a fifth or so is spent on Medicare and Medicaid and   
   everything else makes up about 40 percent. But that, like much of the   
   discussion of "defense" spending, is misleading -- it only counts   
   dollars allocated in the annual defense budget, and in “emergency”   
   supplemental bills.   
   That belies the reality that spending on the American security state   
   is dispersed throughout the federal budget. So while next year’s   
   defense spending, narrowly defined, is expected to come in at $711   
   billion, when you include all the extra dollars hidden away in other   
   parts of the budget, that number will rise to as high as $1.45   
   trillion. That would represent around 40 percent of next year’s   
   budget.   
      
   With Washington in the grip of deficit hysteria, that’s the elephant   
   in the room whose name is never mentioned. As I wrote last week, the   
   almost universally held belief that the the U.S. faces a deficit   
   problem is wrong, and for two simple reasons. First, we have a very   
   small government compared to the rest of the developed world --   
   between 2004 and 2007, the U.S. ranked 24th out of 26 countries in the   
   Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in   
   overall government spending as a share of our economic output. And we   
   also currently have one of the lowest tax burdens -- In 2008, we   
   ranked 26th out of the 30 OECD countries in that category.   
      
   Nonetheless, America’s elites have coalesced around the idea that in   
   order to keep our tax rates among the lowest in the wealthy world,   
   we’ll need to swallow some painful “shared sacrifice” (which in   
   Washington usually means working people sacrificing some economic   
   security and the wealthy getting another tax cut). But it’s important   
   to recognize that it’s an ideological choice to view the projected   
   “budget gap” as a structural, economic problem driven primarily by the   
   growth of “entitlements” -- it’s not a belief grounded in objective   
   fact.   
      
   Instead of the ubiquitous stories about our "deficit crisis," the   
   media could just as easily frame the country’s fiscal outlook as a   
   problem of out-of-control health care costs fueled by the practices of   
   the private insurance industry. As economist Dean Baker pointed out,   
   “If the United States paid the same amount per person for health care   
   as any of the 35 countries with longer life expectancies, we would be   
   looking at huge budget surpluses for the indefinite future.”   
      
   And they could also just as easily report that we face an   
   unsustainably expensive overseas empire problem, made intractable by a   
   deeply entrenched military-industrial-information complex. (The two   
   areas of spending are intertwined -- well over a million Americans   
   have served at least one tour in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, and tens of   
   thousands of them who returned grievously wounded will require costly   
   care for years to come. Economists estimate that even excluding those   
   costs, the tab for the Iraq and Afghanistan operations may come in at   
   $3 trillion dollars.)   
      
   According to some estimates, 91 percent of our long-term public debt   
   -- and the hundreds of billions we pay in interest on that debt   
   annually -- accrued as a result of foreign military adventures of the   
   past. Now contrast that with Social Security, which not only hasn’t   
   added a dime to the deficit but has run surpluses that have partially   
   offset other spending -- in areas like “defense” --for almost 30   
   years.   
      
   Take a peek under the hood and check out what drives the engine of   
   American empire. By no means are they all wasted dollars -- we live in   
   a dangerous world and need a military. But ours remains fundamentally   
   mismatched to the threats we face in the post-Cold War era, despite   
   years of talk in the halls of the Pentagon about transforming the   
   American military for the 21st century.   
      
   It still represents an enormous government agency whose big-ticket   
   weapons systems suck up a fair amount of national treasure in order to   
   be ready for a conventional war between great powers that will never   
   materialize. It’s an agency that’s worked desperately hard to   
   militarize efforts to combat drugs and terrorism in order to justify   
   retaining, and since 9/11/01 increasing, its Cold War levels of   
   funding.   
      
   Nobody talks about it, but our hugely bloated “defense” budget is   
   laden with pork -- not only basing and construction dollars carried by   
   members of Congress back to their districts, but big spending on   
   things like protection for pipelines, shipping and other privately   
   owned operations, and subsidized research and development given away   
   for nothing. It includes billions in military assistance that   
   subsidizes the conflicts of countries like Egypt, Israel, Pakistan and   
   Colombia (or, in Egypt’s case, a payoff to stay on the sidelines) and   
   useless spending on hundreds of bases around the world bristling with   
   fancy weapons systems that are ill-suited for the irregular warfare   
   that the Planet’s Only Superpower is likely to fight.   
      
   In large part, the status quo is maintained by the influence of the   
   defense industry -- it lavished $136 million on law-makers last year.   
   It’s almost comical at times, like when money for a new jet engine was   
   forced through Congress over the objections of the Pentagon, which   
   insisted that the costly project was “unnecessary and a waste of   
   money.”   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)