Budget analysis
Setting America's Priorities straight
The Priorities campaign believes that America can solve, or start to seriously address, many of the most difficult problems we face. We can create a national budget that is responsive to domestic and international needs. And we can do it without raising taxes or creating new ones.
How? By insisting that Congress create sensible budget priorities. By reducing Pentagon waste and using the savings to strengthen American families and communities.
The Priorities campaign focuses on Pentagon waste for two reasons:
• Because a panel of career military experts says cutting $60 billion from the Pentagon budget not only would not harm our defense, but might enhance our national security, and
• Because the Pentagon budget is so unaccountable that not only can the Dept. of Defense not pass an audit, its books are in such bad shape that an audit cannot be performed. See Financial Mismanagement in the Department of Defense.
These are problems that Congress created and has allowed to fester because political candidates benefit politically (as in more jobs in their districts) and monetarily (as in campaign contributions) from military manufacturers.
Because the men and women in Congress benefit from this broken system, we can't expect them to fix it until Americans demand it, elect new leaders, or both.
Where is the waste?
About three-fifths of the federal budget covers expenses that are written into law, including payment on the national debt, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. This is usually called mandatory, or entitlement, spending.
Graphic: U.S. discretionary budget, FY 2006. Portion of the Pentagon budget marked with an X represents $60 billion wasted annually on obsolete Cold War weapons and an excessive nuclear stockpile
The part of the budget that the President and Congress create each year is called the discretionary budget. President Bush has proposed a record $504 billion Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2008. That figure doesn't include an additional $142 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon budget doesn't most homeland security programs, which are budgeted in other areas.
In contrast to the $502 billion that Congress is considering
spending on the Pentagon bureaucracy, look at what we're spending on federal programs that politicians often describe as too expensive:
• $38 billion on K-12 education,
• $50 billion on children's health insurance,
• $13 billion on humanitarian foreign aid,
• $6 billion on job training,
• $2 billion on renewable energy research,
• $8 billion on the Environmental Protection Agency.
When presented with these facts, two-thirds of Americans would change our budget priorities and shift funding, as we propose, away from the Pentagon and into programs that benefit communities and families.
Our prestigious panel of high-ranking retired military and Dept. of Defense officials says $60 billion (the slice represented by the X in the above pie chart) can be trimmed from the Pentagon budget without putting our troops at risk, weakening our national defense, or hurting our ability to fight terrorists.
According to Dr. Lawrence Korb, who served as President Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of defense, the savings would come primarily from cutting obsolete Cold War weapons and excessive nuclear weapons from the defense budget.
Even after trimming $60 billion from the Pentagon budget, America would spend nearly as much on defense as does the rest of the world combined. We would spend more than double the amount spent by China ($122 billion), Russia ($62 billion), and the Axis of Evil ($10 billion) combined.
What we could accomplish
Here's what America could accomplish with that $60 billion. We could:
• Provide health insurance to 9 million American kids who lack it (19,000 in New Hampshire)
• Rebuild or modernize our public schools over 12 years
• Retrain a quarter-million workers each year
• Cut our reliance on foreign oil in half over 10 years
• Improve medical care for veterans
• Improve Homeland Security by inspecting cargo containers entering our ports
• Prevent 6 million children from dying of hunger-related diseases in impoverished countries annually
• Begin to reduce the deficit
Our nation could make these investments year after year -- at no additional taxpayer expense.
That's our vision of what we could accomplish, a vision embodied in our Common Sense Budget Act. But ours isn't not the only vision. It's amazing what we could buy at the local level with the dollars wasted at the Pentagon.
An allied organization, the National Priorities Project, has worked out what New Hampshire could buy with the tax dollars that instead go to ballistic missile defense, nuclear weapons, and the war in Iraq.
If you agree, please consider joining our campaign.
Data sources
Bread for the World, Budget Charts and personal communication with Kendra Rinas, Dec. 5, 2005.
Bread for the World, Hunger Facts.
Budget of the United States, Fiscal Year 2008, Analytical Perspectives, Supplemental Materials. Table 27-1; p. 1, 10-11, 12-13.
Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2008, Appendix. Page 390.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Where the Bombs Are, 2006, ” Nov./Dec. 2006.
Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, The Korb Report, A Realistic Defense Budget for America, by Lawrence J. Korb, 2007.
Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, US Military Spending vs. the World, Feb. 2007.
Childrens Defense Fund, Healthy Ties: Ensuring Heath Care for Children Raised by Grandparents and Other Relatives, 2001.
Children’s Defense Fund, telephone conversation, Marty Teitelbaum, April 2005.
Children's Defense Fund, New Census Data Shows 1.3 Million Children Have Fallen into Poverty Since 2000, August 2006.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2005.
National Center for Educational Statistics, Condition of America’s Public School Facilities, 1999 (NCES 2000-032), June 2000.
New York Times, Dec. 4, 2005, “Health Care of Young Widens with States’ Aid,” p. 1.
Rocky Mountain Institute, Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security, by E. Kyle Datta and Natalie Mims, 2005.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Whose Kids are Covered?, March 2007
United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report, 1998, p. 37.
U.S. Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration, Trade Adjustment Assistance and NAFTA-TAA Activities for Fiscal Years 2001-2005.
U.S. Government Accountability Office, School Facilities: America’s Schools Report Differing Conditions, 1996.
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