Originally posted at the Ellsworth County Independent/Reporter

Friday, October 23, 2009

By MATT HOLLAND

Let’s suppose you are a typical family and you’re managing your monthly budget. The average American family spends $1,100 on housing, $600 on transportation, $450 on food, and $200 on health care.

And let’s say on top of these typical expenses you’re paying $1,400 to maintain the Army tank you keep in your back yard. You don’t really need the tank. You never drive the tank. And the $16,800 you’re paying a year to maintain the tank you don’t need and never drive is sapping your family’s financial future, threatening everything from your ability to pay for your children’s college education, to meeting health care expenses, to saving for the future.

Welcome to the federal budget. This year, of the money that Congress and the president choose to spend—often called the discretionary budget—just over half, or about $693 billion, will go to the military. By comparison, $59 billion will be spent on education; $50 billion on children’s health insurance; and $8 billion on the Environmental Protection Agency. And the $693 billion on military spending doesn’t even include money spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our military spending dwarfs that of Russia, which is no longer a Cold War rival. And it squashes the military budget of China, which is now a major trading partner. In fact, our military budget is equal to the combined military budgets of the next 15 countries behind us.

To be sure, unlike that tank in your back yard, a lot of this spending is necessary. We live in a dangerous era and there are those who would do us harm. And we have responsibilities to allies around the world. But to quote former President Dwight Eisenhower, the former Supreme Allied Commander of World War II: We must not pay one cent more for defense than we have to.

But what constitutes wasteful Pentagon spending? Here are some prime—and expensive—examples:

The F-22 Raptor Fighter Jet. The Air Force itself no longer favors continued production of the F-22, and both President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates oppose it. The jet was designed for defense against the old Soviet Union, but has never flown in combat. Each jet costs $339 million.

Missile defense. We’ve spent $150 billion on missile defense since former President Ronald Reagan gave his famous “Star Wars” defense speech. Technology has changed since then, and the types of systems we’ve been developing don’t work. Rather than throw good money after bad, we should invest in research to determine whether missile defense is even feasible and if so, what kinds of systems should be developed.

The C-17 cargo plane. We already have 205 C-17 cargo planes available or on order. This program was scheduled to end in 2009, but was continued after intense lobbying by Boeing, the manufacturer. Just this month, Congressional leaders authorized $2.5 billion for eight more.

This is only the tip of the iceberg—we’re spending billions and billions of dollars every year on unnecessary and obsolete weapons systems that do nothing to make our nation more secure, yet saddle generations to come with mountains of debt.

Why? Campaign largesse. The 18 lawmakers who serve on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense last year inserted more than $335 million in earmarks into the defense spending bill on behalf of their campaign contributors. Those contributors donated $1.3 million to members who sponsored their earmarks.

The good news is we now have a president and a defense secretary who are willing to stand up to unscrupulous defense contractors and those who would do their bidding. Obama and Gates have brought common sense to military spending, proposing the elimination of programs that don’t work or are obsolete and allocating resources to adapt to modern welfare.

This fresh approach will free up resources for other areas of the budget, such as health care, education, energy independence, and various urgent needs. It’s time we demand that Congress act responsibility and trim the pork from the military budget.

Matt Holland is director of TrueMajority.org, the online department of USAction.

Yesterday’s U.S. Senate vote to end funding for new and unnecessary F-22 fighter jets shows a new willingness among some members of Congress to examine wasteful Pentagon spending, despite the considerable amount of influence defense contractors wield, USAction said Tuesday.

Matt Holland, Pentagon Budget Campaign Director for USAction/TrueMajority, is quoted in The Nation’s blog, The Beat, speaking on the Senate defeat of the F-22s:

“‘Common sense wins out,’” declared Holland. “’Now we will see if House members get the message. The old ways are dead, and from here on out voters will be scrutinizing the Pentagon budget to scrub wasteful and obsolete weapons systems.’”

USAction/TrueMajority helped build the  “True Security” coalition, which is leading the way nationally in educating the public about wasteful defense spending in general and F-22 fighter jets in particular. Members of the coalition include VoteVets, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Common Cause, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Women’s Action for New Directions and other groups.

As part of their campaign to thoroughly examine military spending, USAction/True majority has released a new report, Putting the Pork out to Pasture, that profiles the web of connections between powerful weapons manufacturers and House appropriators.

Politico announced that stemming from this report, Truemajority.org will begin airing a radio ad today in the St. Petersburg, Florida district of Congress member C.W. Bill Young, who took more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from defense contractors and repeatedly did their bidding in a House defense subcommittee and on the House floor. Congressman Young is one of a handful of Representatives who write the FY10 Defense Appropriations bill, which includes the F-22.

The ad features Mike Burns – a former US Air Force pilot and POW who spent years in the same ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison camp as Senator McCain – who calls on Congressman Young to reject his campaign contributors and vote to end the F-22 Raptor fighter jet. Burns is a member of Florida Veterans for Common Sense, a group that works to bring responsibility and effectiveness to military decisions.

“This is one of the most worthless and unnecessary programs and we’ve spent 30 years dumping money into it,” Burns says in the ad, “I’m asking Congressman Young to vote against [the F-22]. Be a lion, not a gopher for Lockheed Martin.”

In addition to this ad campaign, USAction/TrueMajority’s half a million members have pledged to keep pressure on any member of Congress who continues to spend billions on weapons we do not need while lining their campaign war chests with money from weapons builders.

Yesterday’s vote to reject spending on F-22s is a step in the right direction towards investing in true national priorities and standing strong against “purveyors of pentagon pork” in Congress!

A new report - Putting the Pork out to Pasture- issued today by True Majority highlights the link between pork barrel defense projects and campaign contributions. The report shows connections between powerful weapons manufacturers and contributions to members of the House Appropriations Defense Sub-Committee.

The report documents that more than 18 members of the subcommittee have inserted more than $355 million in earmarks into the last defense spending bill on behalf of their campaign contributors. Those contributors, in turn, donated $1.3 million to members who sponsored their earmarks.

“It’s unconscionable that the public servants charged with spending our money to keep America safe appear to be trading billion-dollar weapons contracts for cold, hard campaign cash,” said Matt Holland, Pentagon Budget Campaign Director of USAction/TrueMajority.

The most recent example of the battle to eliminate funding for outdated weapons systems is ongoing in Congress. Despite a veto threat, Pentagon opposition, and serious reliability problems, Congress has repeatedly voted to spend between $500 million and $1.75 billion to keep manufacturing the F-22 fighter jet.

“Weapons like the F-22 do not make us safer, but they do make weapons manufacturers rich. And when those same corporations are spending millions of dollars on our Congress – the public has a right to know, and get outraged,” said Holland.

USAction/TrueMajority’s half a million members have pledged to keep pressure on the Appropriations Committee by running broadcast ads and bringing constituent pressure to bear in the home district of any member who continues to spend billions on unnecessary weapons while larding their campaign war chests with money from weapons builders.

To read the entire report click here.

An amendment to a military spending bill introduced Monday would remove $1.75 billion dollars of spending for an additional seven, excessively costly, F-22 Raptor fighter jets, and effectively terminate their production. Sen. John McCain (R.- Ariz) and Sen. Carl Levin’s (D- Mich.) amendment comes with the backing of President Obama, who declared he will veto the military spending bill unless funding for the F-22s is removed. 

Opposition to funding the F-22 program comes not only from politicians and their constituents, but from the military itself. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have all declared their support of terminating the F-22 fighter jet program. Mr. Donley and Gen. Schwartz explain that: “because of budgetary pressures, the F-22 decision “has increasingly become a zero-sum game,” and that therefore, ‘buying more F-22s means doing less of something else.’

The “budgetary pressures” which Mr. Donley and Gen. Schwartz refer to result from the extreme costliness of the F-22, which has never been flown in combat and was designed three decades ago to use in combat against the Soviet Union. The Washington Post describes that the F-22 currently confounds typical military spending trends in that,

“While most aircraft fleets become easier and less costly to repair as they mature, key maintenance trends for the F-22 have been negative in recent years, and on average from October last year to this May, just 55 percent of the deployed F-22 fleet has been available to fulfill missions guarding U.S. airspace, the Defense Department acknowledged this week.”

At present, the cost of producing the jet is $351 million and flying the jet for a single hour costs a ghastly $44,000!

Calls to cut funding for the F-22s have been complicated by some representatives’ concerns that cutting the F-22 program would result in unnecessary job losses for the 25,000 employees who manufacture F-22s. However, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates disputes the 25,000 employment figure, stating that, as planned, the F-22 program is currently figured to decline over the coming years to employ only 13,000 persons by the year 2011. Additionally, speaking to those who will lose their jobs if production of F-22s is terminated, Sen John McCain declares:

“Our sympathy is with them. We will do everything we can to provide job opportunities, including in the defense industries across this country. But we cannot argue that we should spend taxpayers’ dollars for weapons systems simply to create or keep jobs.”

A senate vote on the amendment is scheduled to come up shortly, so contact your Senators and urge them to stop funding on the wasteful F-22s and invest instead in America’s future! To send your Senator this handy F-22 hologram card as well, click here.