Matt Collins
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The Lighthouse - Volume 12, Issue 39 - September 27, 2010
The Pentagon's Missing Trillion Dollars
MyGovCost.org allows you to estimate not only your lifetime federal tax liability, but also your share of the tax liabilities for twenty specific spending categories, including foreign aid, welfare, and national defense. Defense spending is especially mysterious to most Americans--and understandably so. It is the least transparent component of the budget, and questioning its size and composition invites the spurious charge that one is "soft on defense"--a label that few politicians wish to acquire, no matter how plagued the defense budget is with waste, fraud, and abuse.
In his latest op-ed, defense budget expert and Independent Institute Research Fellow Winslow T. Wheeler notes a trillion-dollar anomaly in defense spending: from 1998 to 2010 Congress added $1.031 trillion to "base" (non-war) Pentagon spending, yet during that time, the Navy and Air Force shrank, whereas the Army grew by only 7 percent. That's right. The Navy saw a reduction of 46 ships, the Air Force (along with the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard) saw a decline of 36 squadrons, and the Army saw three additional brigade combat team equivalents--an increase of about 7 percent.
What did the Pentagon do with the extra trillion dollars? It didn't spend that money on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--spending for those $1.113 trillion campaigns is not considered "base" spending. It didn't spend the bulk of the trillion dollar "base" increase on the Army's small expansion (although, at a price tag of about $150 billion, that expansion represented a staggering 55 percent increase in non-war forces). And it didn't spend that money mostly on new, high tech equipment: most of our military hardware inventory has grown older, according to Wheeler and the Congressional Budget Office.
"The Surge in Defense Spending," by Winslow T. Wheeler (9/18/10)
Congress, the Defense Budget, and Pork: A Snout-to-Tail Description of Congress' Foremost Concern in National Security Legislation, by Winslow T. Wheeler
MyGovCost.org
MyGovCost Facebook Page
MyGovCost Twitter Page
SOURCE:
http://www.independent.org/
The Pentagon's Missing Trillion Dollars
MyGovCost.org allows you to estimate not only your lifetime federal tax liability, but also your share of the tax liabilities for twenty specific spending categories, including foreign aid, welfare, and national defense. Defense spending is especially mysterious to most Americans--and understandably so. It is the least transparent component of the budget, and questioning its size and composition invites the spurious charge that one is "soft on defense"--a label that few politicians wish to acquire, no matter how plagued the defense budget is with waste, fraud, and abuse.
In his latest op-ed, defense budget expert and Independent Institute Research Fellow Winslow T. Wheeler notes a trillion-dollar anomaly in defense spending: from 1998 to 2010 Congress added $1.031 trillion to "base" (non-war) Pentagon spending, yet during that time, the Navy and Air Force shrank, whereas the Army grew by only 7 percent. That's right. The Navy saw a reduction of 46 ships, the Air Force (along with the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard) saw a decline of 36 squadrons, and the Army saw three additional brigade combat team equivalents--an increase of about 7 percent.
What did the Pentagon do with the extra trillion dollars? It didn't spend that money on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--spending for those $1.113 trillion campaigns is not considered "base" spending. It didn't spend the bulk of the trillion dollar "base" increase on the Army's small expansion (although, at a price tag of about $150 billion, that expansion represented a staggering 55 percent increase in non-war forces). And it didn't spend that money mostly on new, high tech equipment: most of our military hardware inventory has grown older, according to Wheeler and the Congressional Budget Office.
"The Surge in Defense Spending," by Winslow T. Wheeler (9/18/10)
Congress, the Defense Budget, and Pork: A Snout-to-Tail Description of Congress' Foremost Concern in National Security Legislation, by Winslow T. Wheeler
MyGovCost.org
MyGovCost Facebook Page
MyGovCost Twitter Page
SOURCE:
http://www.independent.org/
