An unnecessary Expense

Congress continues to prioritize
the interests of weapons manufacturers
and military contractors
over the real needs of people

The US Congress continues to give about $740 billion per year to the Pentagon and Weapons Contractors. This is in the midst of a pandemic and as people across the country struggle to make rent and pay their bills, and as severe climate change continues to get worse because Congress can't find the money to help solve it.

So, the Military and Weapons Industry is given $740 billion per year, while over 40 million people in America are low-income or living in poverty, healthcare and pandemic problems are looming, public services are out of money, and the needed steps to solve climate change are neglected due to 'a lack of federal funding'.

Shouldn't we be solving Real Problems, rather than be spending most of our taxpayer money on a Military Industry that pretends this is still the 50s Cold War with a looming threat of being bombed and taken over by Russia and the communists ?

Military and Weapons Expenses use up a huge amount of public taxpayer money and national capital resources, which just 'happens to be' extremely profitable for those involved.

In 2016, $304 billion of the $741 billion Pentagon Budget went directly to privately owned corporations (military contractors). Lockheed-Martin received more than $36 billion in military contracts – an amount greater than the budgets of 22 states !

Americans have been deceived into believing that these huge Military Contracts and this vastly bloated Defense Industry is “necessary”, along with the “need” for 'nuclear deterrence' for National Defense.

The US Military, which appears to be run by the Weapons Industry, have sold the US public taxpayers on their outrageously expensive 'deterrence policy', which is based on false assumptions about their necessity for national defense and world peace. Bottom line – is all this money, and all these super advanced weapons, all so necessary?

It's time for a new US foreign policy, a different kind of approach towards national security and achieving world peace, and a Bold Plan for Reducing the Military-Defense Budget until it is down to a reasonable 20% of what it now is. But this will require Congressional and Presidential courage to walk away from the highly influential Military Industrial Lobbyists and Campaign contributors.

The Expense of the US Military is Huge

The Expense of the US Military, nuclear weapons and delivery systems is Huge.

Is it worth it? Is this Huge Military Budget really necessary for national defense and global peace?

Why do the American taxpayers pay 10 times more than any other country on military and weapons??

It is because the American Public have been fooled by the huge weapons and defense industry, so that lucrative contracts and maintenance money continues to flow into these hugely profitable industries and supply-chains.

Yet this vast amount of public taxpayer money could be spent on humanitarian, health, and environmental needs. Used right here in the US, this money could be redirected towards ending national poverty and homelessness, it could be used for providing healthcare and free education for everyone, and also used for a guaranteed public jobs program.

The Pentagon could be more efficient
with their Generous Budget

The Pentagon Budget, agreed to by Congress and the White House, is an open-door for waste, fraud, and abuse.

For decades now, the Pentagon has been wasting and abusing taxpayer money, and with their yearly renewed gigantic budget they will continue to waste the money.

What is ultimately needed is a more intelligent defense strategy that focuses on the most urgent and real challenges we face, most of which are not military problems. But even before America finally shifts its Defense Policy towards a more peaceful and less-expensive strategy, there is plenty of room to reduce the Pentagon Budget.

The Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force – a group that includes former Pentagon officials, military officers, White House budget officials, and Congressional budget analysts – has outlined a plan that could save at least $1.2 trillion from projected Pentagon budgets over the next ten years. Nearly one-quarter of that total comes from eliminating waste and bureaucracy, from reducing the department’s use of private contractors, and junking the Trump administration’s proposal for a 'Space Force'. And the Project on Government Oversight has shown that many billions could be saved by implementing reasonable pricing and accountability on Pentagon contracts.

It’s time for policymakers and the public to realize that providing our nation with more Security does not have to involve more money, but rather more thoughtfulness and efficiency.

– from... The Great Pentagon Waste of $$

Accountability?

The Military also wastes a ton of money, because it has avoided any accountability for its spending and its contracts to large corporations.

This lack of accountability is maintained because of the close relationship and revolving door between the military and corporations (suppliers).

The Pentagon 'loses' track of many billions of $$, and it gives millions to companies for absurdly overpriced parts.

In addition, there are great discrepancies between the Defense Department's various estimates of war costs between 2001 and 2019, with one estimate reaching nearly 6 trillion dollars spent and obligated over that period.

For a long time the Defense Department was never audited, despite receiving hundreds of billions of dollars annually and having more than $2.2 trillion in assets.

The Government Accountability Office said, "serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense have prevented its financial statements from being auditable."

In 2010, Congress included a requirement in the National Defense Authorization Act that gave the military "an extra seven years to clean up the books and get ready" for an Audit by September 2017.

So before this date, the Pentagon hired the 'Defense Business Board', an independent advisory panel of corporate executives and financial consultants, to make an Internal Study of Pentagon Expenses. But after the Study documented extremely wasteful spending, senior defense officials swiftly discredited and suppressed the results.

In an investigation by the Washington Post, this Report revealed for the first time that the Pentagon was spending almost a quarter of its $580 billion budget on overhead and core business operations, such as accounting, human resources, logistics and property management. The report also identified a clear path for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years.

The Report showed that the Defense Department was paying more than 1 million contractors, civilians and uniformed personnel – to fill 'back-office jobs' far from the front lines of any actual conflict.

More to read...
Nuclear Weapons are Costly

How the Pentagon wastes our tax-dollars

Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud

Video - The Pentagon doesn't know where its money goes

The Military wastes a Ton of Money

The Military Budget for Year 2021 will be about $740 billion. This is more than half of the whole Federal Budget for non-mandatory and non-interest expenses !!

Moreover, when we also include the 'war and security costs' in the budgets of other national security agencies and also the yearly interest paid on military debts, the actual National Security Price-tag Per Year is more than $1.2 trillion !

This is even more ridiculous if we consider that military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan have been greatly reduced since 2010 when at that time 180,000 troops were being employed.

So, given that our troops and weapons are no longer being used as much overseas, Why is the Military Budget larger than ever?

In spite of no recent war nor any recent defense security threat, U.S. spending on the Pentagon and nuclear warheads is at historic levels, even higher than the peaks of the Korean and Vietnam wars and the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, and nearly twice the Cold War average military spending.

More Money to the Military?

The Weapons Contractor's Phony Argument
for increasing the Defense Budget
for a 'modernization of weapons'

The Defense Dept is proposing a Nuclear Arms Race with other nuclear nations – a race for greater “modernization”. This is permitted in the 2010 New START Agreement between the United States and Russia, which allows for nuclear weapons “modernization.”

So now, the U.S. Government is planning to spend over 500 billion dollars over the next 10 years on 'modernizing' nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems, in order to keep up with all the latest new technology.

But this ends up becoming an endless cycle, between ever advancing technologies and the consequential “need” for an expensive contract for modernization of the military and its weapons, or in other words, this is a never ending escalation of nuclear arms, another nuclear arms race.

This endless cycle, this nuclear weapon arms race is irrational and does not have to exist, because alternatively all countries could just give up more and more of their nuclear weapons, until all of them are gone, or if not all then at least almost. Then, there would not be any nuclear arms race.

There should not be anything truly difficult about countries negotiating and agreeing upon this as a global plan, a strategic plan for the final elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world, as well as negotiating a global de-escalation of any nation's first-attack weapons or systems, for the greater global aim of World Peace.

Plans to improve nuclear missiles

The Air Force is on-track to spend $100 billion on improving U.S. land-based nuclear ballistic missiles, as a 'nuclear deterrent', even though this would increase the risk of starting a nuclear war, either by accident or intimidation.

This intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is called the Minuteman. It is launched from from various land-based missile silos in the Midwest. These silos, right on American land and near to Midwest communities, are priority targets in any nuclear war!

In addition to these land-based missiles, nuclear bombs are also ever-ready to be launched from the sea and the air, using submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and air-launched nuclear missiles carried by long-range strategic bombers.

The Air Force has already awarded a $13.3 billion contract for a replacement of the Minuteman-3 missile, even though many defense experts argue that this “improvement” is unneeded and dangerous as well.

Read article... $13.3 billion for replacing Minuteman 3

What?   Make more nuclear weapons?

More than 15,000 existing plutonium bomb cores (pits) are already stored at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX. These cores last for at least 100 years, and the average pit-age in the U.S. stockpile is less than 40 years old.

But in May 2018 the Trump administration recommended that more cores be produced, 80 plutonium bomb cores per year. Their weak justification for these proposed plans was 'an uncertain geopolitical landscape.'

The plan is for at least 30 plutonium cores to be produced each year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico, though since 2011 Los Alamos ceased production because of a series of safety lapses and concerns about a lack of accountability. Then in addition, at least 50 of the plutonium cores will be produced each year at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

Read more... Plutonium Pit Production

U.S. Plutonium Pit Production Plans

Time to Move On from Military $$Waste

We waste these hundred of billions of dollars on the Military, with the justification of 'national defense' and 'nuclear deterrence', even though our actual present-day threats are mostly non-military: such as climate change, a global pandemic, water pollution, global hunger, global poverty, global unemployment, and civil wars in various regions, all of which cannot be solved by a dominating super hi-tech US military and nuclear weapons.

No other country is threatening to attack, bomb, or take over the United States. It is simply not the reality of this present-day world. Our Cold War adversaries, communist Russia and China, have absolutely no intentions nor any reasons for attacking us militarily and it would be silly to think they would do such an irrational and insane action against us. Instead, the contemporary 'war' is in economic trade, market access, and of course Cyberspace. Therefore, we are wastefully spending a huge proportion of all our taxpayer dollars on a Military Complex that is no longer relevant to national defense, as it once was.

It is time to Move On from the Budget Waste.

The Military Budget is now 60% higher than it was in 2000, when adjusted for inflation.

The 2021 U.S. Military Budget of $740 billion is –

▪ 15 times larger than the federal housing budget ($48.2 billion)

▪ 30 times larger than the federal public school budget ($23.4 billion)

▪ 80 times larger than the Environmental Protection Agency budget ($8.8 billion)

Deep Cuts needed in the Military Budget

If the current military budget were Cut in Half, gradually 10% per year over the next 5 years, then we can use these freed up dollars for Real National Needs, such as transportation and internet infrastructure, healthcare for everyone, free childcare for working families, free education, debt-free college, a transition to clean energy and a solving of climate change.

The first Big Steps towards cutting wasteful Military Expenses and greatly reducing the Military Budget are –

1. No more looking for war, and certainly no more 'endless wars' such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

2. Stop the expensive and unnecessary plans for modernizing nuclear weapons and missiles, and instead internationally negotiate an immediate reduction and gradual elimination of all Nuclear Weapons in the world.

3. Close most Overseas Bases, and help employ those personnel in private or public jobs. Read... Basic Facts about Overseas Bases

4. Stop letting the Military and Weapons Contractors influence government decisions or expect government favors from their campaign contributions.

Then, we can use this freed-up Money to create Real National Security and World Peace.

True security can never come without good jobs, clean energy, accessible health care and education. True international peace cannot come without international cooperation, fair trade, and world peace agreements. Moreover, true global security – physical, emotional and mental security – is reduced by the existence of nuclear and other mass-destructive weapons and by nuclear threats to other nations, and even by the doctrine of 'deterrence' – 'keeping our country safe from nuclear attack by threatening to destroy the attacker with an even larger attack'.

It’s time to change our national priorities.

It's time to move our Public Money, from unnecessary military and weapons companies into importantly needed public services and to help all Americans have a better life.

Read... Steps for Reducing Military Spending

Alternative Uses of the Military Budget

War and preparation for war
use up a huge amount of money
which could be used to help people

If the Government remains on its present track, then over 7400 Billion Dollars will be allocated in the next 10 years for the Military 'Defense' and Weapons modernization.

This is A LOT OF MONEY !

What are some better uses of this money?

▪ $200 billion over the next 10 years could be used to provide a great pre-school education for every 3-and 4-year old in America.

▪ $60 billion over the next 10 years could be used to provide two years of free college education for all graduating HS students.

▪ $80 billion over the next 10 years could be used for converting America's carbon-emitting energy-production to clean energy-production, to comply with a bold Clean Power Plan. And this expense will be offset in the long-term by savings in climate-change mitigation.

▪ $200 Billion over the next 10 years could be used for improving highways, railways, bridges, dams, and other national infrastructure, including the energy grid.

▪ 200 billion over the next 10 years could be used for improving healthcare, vaccines, and medical research.

Read... Finding Better Uses of 740 Billion Dollars

There are better uses of world capital

All nations combined spend nearly $2 trillion (2,000 billion dollars) every year on militaries and weapons, and about half of this is spent by the U.S. Taxpayers.

In addition, over the next 10 years governments of nine nuclear nations – US, UK, Russia, China, France, Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan – are planning to spend over 1,000 billion dollars on the modernization, development, deployment and maintenance of nuclear weapons. This enormous amount of money will be spent preparing for a nuclear war – which, if it happens, will kill millions of innocent people, destroy important global ecosystems and further accelerate climate change. So, instead of spending this financial capital on solving problems of poverty, health, food, water, and climate; this needed money will be used for improving weapons that will destroy millions of people and the planet !

The Expense of building and maintaining weapons and militaries is so Huge that it boggles the mind.

Does this make any rational sense? Of course not. But it does make weapons corporations and their investors very rich ... at everyone else's expense.

Alternatively, this huge amount of global capital could be used to bring Real Security to the world – by solving human needs and protecting the global environment. These funds could be used for improving global health, education, economic development, and for solving world hunger, diseases, and climate change.

For when nations cooperate towards mutual Prosperity, then no longer is there any reason to attack or destroy one another.

Ultimately, nuclear weapons, and the vast spending needed to keep improving and maintaining them, are a dead-end road – that leads to nowhere except mass-destruction and global suicide. Threatening other nations with Nuclear Destruction cannot create a peaceful world, nor can it ever assure national security. A peaceful world will be created by international cooperation and mutual helpfulness, and by diplomacy; not by nuclear arsenals and threats of mass-destruction.

Using this money for Real Global Needs

As already stated above, the total global spending on militaries and weapons is estimated to be about $2 trillion (1,000 billion dollars).

So let’s examine the potential benefits of diverting just half of this money ($1,000 billion) towards Real Needs – such as humanitarian and environmental needs.

Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute estimated various costs for: ending hunger in the world ($30 billion/yr), ensuring clean water for everyone ($11 billion/yr.), preserving topsoil ($24 billion/yr.), protecting biodiversity ($31 billion/yr.), restoring fisheries ($13 billion/yr.), stabilizing water tables ($10 billion/yr.), eradicating adult illiteracy ($4 billion/yr. providing basic health care ($33 billion/yr.) and universal primary education ($10 billion/yr.) in developing countries.

Read... $30 billion a year will eradicate world hunger

Just the $13 billion contract for improving the U.S. Minuteman missile could instead be used to developing safe drinking water and sanitation for everyone in the whole world. Read.. Clean Drinking Water & Sanitation for everyone

Just in the U.S., about $70 billion/yr. would eliminate poverty. Other social uses of this huge amount of money might be to provide a guaranteed adequate income for everyone, guaranteed housing, healthcare and education, along with clean-energy production, green infrastructure, and ecological agriculture.

Read..

Military Spending and its alternatives

See video... What can be done with 2 trillion?

$5 Trillion spent on Afghanistan and Iraq Where & to Whom did the money go??

hint - Defense Industry Contracters

Business-as-usual in the Obama Admin

Liberals and non-conservatives often mistakenly think that the Military and Nuclear Problem is due to the Republican Party. But this is not true. The Democrats in Congress and in the Executive Branch have also been 'guided' by Lobbyists/Gov-officials from the Weapons Industry and by selected 'defense experts' who maintain the dangerous and ever-expensive doctrine/fallacy of 'nuclear deterrence', and also by the near-sighted interests of the vast Military Economic Complex.

The Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress were
'business-as-usual' in regards to Nuclear Weapons and the bloated Military Budget, and they wasted our Public Money just as much as the Bush and Trump Admins.

Here is a News Flash from the Past –

“As part of a record $3.8 trillion budget proposal, the Obama Administration is asking Congress to increase spending on the U.S. nuclear arsenal by more than $7 billion over the next five years. This includes large funding increases for new plutonium production.”