2-14-06, 8:56 am
For almost half a century, Americans looked forward to the day when the country would be at peace and federal spending could be redirected away from the military buildup and toward health care, housing, education and other programs that raise the quality of life for working people and their families.
That day finally came during the last year of the Clinton administration in 2000, when domestic spending finally outpaced military spending as a percentage of GDP for the first time since 1940, before the U.S. entered World War II.
The United States had finally joined other advanced nations in putting more money into social programs than the military.
But that huge achievement was short-lived. Beginning in 2003 with Bush’s military escalation and the war on Iraq, the U.S. resumed its military buildup and put a quick end to improvements in domestic programs.
With Bush’s new fiscal year 2007 budget request for $440 billion in overall military spending, plus an additional $120 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan this year, the U.S. is spending more on its military than the entire rest of the world combined.
U.S. military spending as a percentage of GDP dropped to 3.0 percent during the Clinton years and then jumped to 3.4 percent in 2002, 3.7 percent in 2003, 3.9 percent in 2004 and 4.0 percent in 2005, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Canada spends 1.1 percent of its GDP on the military; Japan spends 1.0 percent; the UK spends 2.4 percent; Germany spends 1.5 percent; and South Korea, where thousands of U.S. troops are stationed, spends 2.8 percent of its GDP on its military.
The U.S. military budget is eight times larger than China’s, ten times larger than Russia’s, and 16 times larger than the UK’s.
The new U.S. budget increases military spending by 6.9 percent but cuts nonmilitary spending by $2.2 billion, to $393.3 billion. Health and human services spending will fall 2.3 percent and education spending will drop by 3.8 percent.
The biggest health care cuts will come from Medicare by reducing the amounts paid to health care providers, primarily hospitals, hospices, nursing homes and home health agencies. These cuts will affect not only Medicare’s 42 million patients but also the health care workers who are already underpaid in many areas.
The education cuts include vocational training, which serves primarily poorer students, and programs to help prepare poor and minority students for college.
If the U.S. reduced military spending to the 3.0 percent of GDP that became the new standard in the Clinton years, the new budget would call for $392 billion in total military spending, a more than sufficient amount to maintain all U.S. military systems and fund new research and development. An additional $168 billion could be shifted over to social and economic programs.
Alternatively, the difference could wipe out half of the $337 billion deficit that the Congressional Budget Office estimates for 2006, which would reduce the $190 billion we are now spending each year in interest on the debt.
The deficit hit 2.6 percent of GDP in 2005 and is estimated to reach 3.2 percent this year, well above the 2.3 percent average for the post-World War II era. The CBO estimates that budget deficits over the next five years will total $2.2 trillion.
Bush’s budget also calls for his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to become permanent, at a cost of $178.6 billion over the next five years and $1.35 trillion over the next decade.
The bottom line is that there is a smaller share of discretionary money available in the total budget and Bush is pushing a growing portion of it to military purposes. As a share of the budget, discretionary spending has declined from 68 percent in 1962 to 39 percent in 2005. Over the same period, it has also diminished in relation to the size of the economy, falling from 12.7 percent of gross domestic product to 7.9 percent.
As a share of GDP, total discretionary spending over the past 40 years peaked at 13.6 percent in 1968, driven by military outlays that reached 9.4 percent of GDP at the height of the Vietnam War. Similarly, the trough in discretionary spending that occurred in 1999 reflected the bottoming out of military expenditures at 3.0 percent in 1999 and 2000. In contrast, nondefense discretionary spending as a share of GDP varied over a narrower range — from 3.2 percent (1999) to 5.2 percent (1980).
Inflation-adjusted military spending over the past 20 years has averaged about $380 billion annually in 2003 dollars, ranging from about $460 billion (1986 and 1987) to about $305 billion (1998 and 1999). By 2003, however, military outlays had exceeded their 20-year average, and now they are likely to remain above it for a number of years because of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Republican quest for military domination.
From Labor Research Association
