Moyers goes after ABMs: Inside the Pentagon Is Our Massive Defense Budget Keeping Us Safe?

PBS ^ | 8-1-2003 | Bill Moyers

[risk]

Inside the Pentagon: Defense Dollars

On July 31, 2003, Reuters led its business news coverage with the headline "Defense Spending Driving U.S. Economy." In January 1961 President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a warning about this symbiotic relationship between government defense spending and the economy in his farewell address to the nation. Indeed, Department of Defense and related defense spending accounts for the majority of federal spending in nearly every state. And the U.S. accounts for 43 percent of world military spending. What are the actual numbers? .

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. --President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation

Eisenhower's words of warning undoubtedly hold extra weight, coming from an ex-General who had witnessed World War II defense spending restore a depression economy, and a president who presided over crucial years of the Cold War.

The current U.S. defense budget one of the largest in American history. The defense budget has not reached the high percentage of discretionary spending that it held during the Reagan administration. (Discretionary spending is the the portion of the federal budget that Congress can disperse — in 1982 defense spending accounted for 61.1 percent of the total disrectionary budget.) However, the 2003 and 2004 budget numbers do not include the costs of the war in Iraq or peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts. Current Pentagon estimates run to $3.9 billion a month to keep nearly 150,000 American troops in Iraq. White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten puts the total reconstruction costs for 2003 at about $7.3 billion.

*NOTE ABOUT THE FIGURES:

U.S. Spending: As noted above, discretionary spending is the part of the budget over which Congress has control (the numbers exclude entitlements such as Social Security, Veterans Benefits and other mandated programs). The figures for the 2003 budget come from the most recent House Budget Committee documents as the full spending package has yet to be passed. These numbers are rendered in constant 1996 dollars for easier comparison. [Numbers were put into constant (1996) dollars by using the deflators 'total defense' and 'total nondefense' as presented in Table 10.1, Budget of the United States government, FY2004, Historical Tables.]

U.S. Budget Breakdown: The White House's Citizen's Tax Guide 2002 provides information on spending by agency and by function. The figures of spending by function reflect the discretionary budget. The figures by agency reflect the total federal outlay. Figures by function reflect interest payments on the national debt.

Sources: THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 31, 2003; Reuters: Defense Spending Driving U.S. Economy; Budget of the United States Government, 2004; Congressional Budget Office; Office of Management and Budget; National Priorities Project

[risk]

I didn't take the time to listen to this whole program but I could tell it was a broadside attack from the left on President Bush's NMD (national missile defense) initiatives.

Spinney is cited in this CATO institute study called More Defense Spending For Smaller Forces: What Hath DOD Wrought?by William A. Niskanen, so he doesn't appear to be an anathema to the right.

Here's another link: Defense Power Games from 1998.

My concern about NMD critics are twofold: first, they underestimate American ingenuity. Second, they are often thinly cloaked pacifists who want to reduce American hegemony. With NMD, there is much to be gained by trying, and everything to be lost by ignoring the possibilities.

Moyer compared our deployment of an untested ABM system to the introduction of the M16 in Vietnam, where it had problems initially. I sooner trust a spammer with my social security number than trust Moyers to shoulder the responsibility of educating Americans about critical problems with our military spending budgets.

[risk]

Slander against our NMD program ping.

[LibWhacker]

You know, you've gotta laugh at the left. Ann Coulter writes a bestseller exposing them as traitors and within a few weeks they've gone back to work like busy little bees, doing all they can to undermine the country's ability to defend itself.

Like nobody'll notice what they're up to . . .

BWAHAHAhahahahahaha!!! . . . whatta bunch of effing maroons!

[risk]

I think Eisenhower had a good point, but the left (as usual) blows anything reasonable out of proportion. Of course we need to monitor our military spending. Of course it can feed off of itself and become a porkbarrel. But without it we'd be chained together in mines working for the dictator of the decade.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #4

Liberals feed their constituency with welfare spending. More NMD budget means less welfare spending, which would shrink liberals' power.

They have no choice but to shoot down large defense research.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Why do you think the guys name is Chuck [ Spinney ]? he real good at spinning.!

[A Simple Soldier]

Gosh, that is so clever. What an imaginative play on his name.

I'll bet you actually watched what he had to say. And listened. I'll bet you are just itching to present the reams of well-synthesized and analyzed information you have accumulated working in the Pentagon for 30 years.

I know Spinney. He is more conservative than 85% of the people on this site and 95% of the Republican Party.

Throwing money at a problem ain't gonna solve it. This goes for the DOD especially. But trying to force even a modicum of efficiency on the DOD or even a reasonable attempt to balance their books is seen as what? Unpatriotic? Since when is being a judicious caretaker of the people's money unpatriotic? Or unconservative for that matter?

Patriotism is not measured in how much more we can spend for some of the crap we have and yet keep other programs (people-oriented) on the verge of fiscal collapse for most of an FY.

Don't get wrapped around that it was on Bill Moyer's show.

[Athelas]

"My concern about NMD critics are twofold: first, they underestimate American ingenuity. Second, they are often thinly cloaked pacifists who want to reduce American hegemony. With NMD, there is much to be gained by trying, and everything to be lost by ignoring the possibilities."

I agree with your sentiments. The same people that are attacking NMD were attacking the Tomahawk when it was under development. It also suffered from many setbacks. Now it is a mainstay of our defense systems. Many of our state of the art systems look like this while being developed.

The Pentagon is perfectly capable of making this work. They need to be given the chance, especially with NK having nukes and 3 stage ICBM's.

PBS has been running a campaign against NMD for several years. Last fall a Frontline aired where they ridiculed NMD based primarily on the position that the threat was hyped, the NK's didn't really have any nukes and were years away. They went on and on about how the administration was hyping the possibility of rogue states having nukes to justify NMD, how there really wasn't a threat and wasn't likely to be, blah blah blah. They paraded out former Clinton SecDef Perry to pooh pooh the possibility etc etc. My own hometown paper ran editorials citing the program as evidence of how wasteful this all was, how no one that was a threat had nukes, how they weren't going to have them for many years.

It was aired here just 2 DAYS prior to the NK announcement that they had nukes. Of course neither my paper nor Frontline has run a "gosh were we ever wrong" type correction.

[Athelas]

Oh one last thing. Moyers is so fundamentally dishonest I'd even believe a Clinton before I'd believe him. That's how bad he is. He has less familiarity with the truth than Bill Clinton IMO.

[gaspar]

A judicious caretaker of the people's money. Nicely put. However, Rumsfeld's effort to remake the DOD civilian hires into a more efficient operating element has met with fierce resistance in Congress. Democrats don't want any tinkering with a system that practically rewards civilian sloth and mismanagement yet which requires the infusion of tens of thousands of military in what should be civilian slots. My complaint here is that you will never see Moyers attack this systemic problem. It is so much easier to aim broadsides at particular defense programs.

As for Moyers himself, he is probably the most outstanding representative of that muzzy-headed Janus-faced antedeluvian creature, the Marxist cum Christian seminarian.

[kylaka]

Maybe so on Spinney... I'll take your word for it. But there are two sides to every story, and as usual, Moyers only presented one side.

[El Gato]

Despite what is said here, the defense "burden" is not at record highs, it's actually at or near record lows, as a fraction of the overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It hit lows not seen since prior to WW-II, before we began building our forces up because of the wars in Europe and Asia, during the last years of the Clinton administration. It hasn't risen all that much since, and most of what rise has occurred as been due to the costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, not any increase in force levels or R&D.

Using the fraction of the "discretionary" budget is meaningless, because the "non-discrentionary" budget consists of the bulk of federal spending. Either compare to total federal budgets, where again defense is at or near post WW-II low levels, or compare to the GDP for a meaningfull comparision. The Clinton administration closed 40% of the Air Force Air Logistics Centers. They closed a comparable number of other bases and functions. The current plan is for another round of base closures (BRAC). No one is talking about re-opening any of those (stateside) bases.