Paying for the War on ISIS

Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan raise an uncomfortable question:

The ISIS campaign is utterly amorphous and open-ended at this point — exactly the kind of potentially crippling government program Republicans usually want to slash. It could last more than three years (and that’s what they’re saying at the outset); the cost is estimated by some to be around $15 billion a year, but no one really knows. The last phase of the same war cost, when all was said and done, something close to $1.5 trillion – and our current travails prove that this was one government program that clearly failed to achieve its core original objectives, and vastly exceeded its original projected costs.

If this were a massive $1.5 trillion infrastructure project for the homeland, we’d be having hearing after hearing on how ineffective and crony-ridden it is; there would be government reports on its cost-benefit balance; there would be calls to end it tout court. But a massive government program that can be seen as a form of welfare dependency for the actual countries — Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Kurdistan — facing the crisis gets almost no scrutiny at all.

Don't worry, there's always money for war.  Schools, health care, infrastructure, Social Security, not so much.

The Cost keeps Climbing

This article comes from early in 2013, but is quite relevant.

When the Very Serious People in DC talk about how we cannot afford unemployment benefits or food stamps or Social Security, it would be well to consider this:

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a new study by a Harvard researcher.

Washington increased military benefits in late 2001 as the nation went to war, seeking to quickly bolster its talent pool and expand its ranks. Those decisions and the protracted nation-building efforts launched in both countries will generate expenses for years to come, Linda J. Bilmes, a public policy professor, wrote in the report that was released Thursday.

“As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives,” the report says. “The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.”

Bilmes said the United States has spent almost $2 trillion already for the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those costs, she said, are only a fraction of the ultimate price tag. The biggest ongoing expense will be providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans of the two conflicts.

“Historically, the bill for these costs has come due many decades later,” the report says, noting that the peak disbursement of disability payments for America’s warriors in the last century came decades after the conflicts ended. “Payments to Vietnam and first Gulf War veterans are still climbing.”

Guns versus butter.  It's always guns versus butter.

THis is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

From the always insightful Digby, a chart that is at once fascinating...and profoundly depressing (click to enlarge).  This depicts the highest paid public employee in each state:

 

 

Her comment?

 



But we definitely have to cut back on elementary school teachers, bridges and firehouses. We just don't have the money.

Just to interpret a bit: in 40 of our 50 states, the highest paid public employee is a coach.  Not that I don't love me some sports, because I certainly do, but that sort of prioritization is screwed up.

More Worst Person in the World...and Ultrarunning

As seen on the NBC Nightly News on 3 Oct, Representative Randy Neugebaum (R, Texas), after having voted with his party to shut down the government...is then rude and argumentative with a National Park Service ranger who is enforcing a closure in the DC area.




[Video credit YouTube, here, if the embedded does not play]


The arrogance, the hypocrisy, the unapologetic nature of this joker's attitude simply defy belief.

As I continually say, I gotta get out more on the trails and clear my head.  The bride and I were up on the Appalachian Trail yesterday with some friends to scope out Bailey Spring a couple miles inside the PA border (it is barely running due to no rain to speak of for the past 6 weeks).

I am not certain whether the AT is an outright Federal corridor or some type of public-private joint ownership deal, but there was no evidence of closure.  Though as a practical matter, it'd be absolutely unenforceable.

 

Resequence These Words: Asylum, Inmates, Running (and a link to Ultrarunning)

Plus include the words "are" and "the" (twice).  Then you'll have the real explanation for the government shutdown this morning.

Along these lines, I ran across a great article in Salon, here.  The main gist dealt with retirement--about which I will post much more in a day or so--but this paragraph also jumped out at me and seems relevant to today's government news.

It's all part and parcel of the same dysfunction, as the die-hards try to selectively whack pieces of the government based upon their misguided ideologies.

As Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson write in their book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, it’s not just lack of money and material resources that weaken a country, it’s the gap between rich and poor itself that makes things fall apart. This explains all kinds of incongruent phenomena, like why babies born in the U.S., a wealthy country that spends more on healthcare than any other, are more likely to die and have a shorter life expectancy than those born in Greece, a much poorer nation. And why murder rates, the number of teenage births, and obesity rates are higher in unequal societies, despite their relative wealth.

The link to Ultrarunning?  It's a rather egalitarian sport, meaning "Affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people."

Out there in the backcountry, we are all just athletes doing our best to enjoy a peculiar pastime.

Food Stamps

Via Southern Beale on 15 June, a great quote about balancing the federal budget:

Horrible person Rand Paul’s effort to drastically cut food stamps was smacked down by the Senate, failing 65 to 33. Said Sen. Frank Lautenberg,

“Hungry children didn’t cause the recession or the deficit, and cutting food stamps will not solve our debt problem,” he said. “But hungry children don’t have lobbyists, so programs like food stamps end up on the Republican chopping block.”

Amen, brother!

 

Federal Budget...and Ultrarunning

Saw a great post over at Firedoglake a couple weeks ago that with plain and simple graphics talks to the Federal Budget...and options for solving "the problem."

I can't embed the graphics so I ask you to click over there.  But the narrative is quite simple and direct:

If you are truly worried about the budget deficit, which is an idiotic thing to actually be worried about at a time of incredibly low government borrowing rates and high unemployment, the place to start would be looking at the basic outline of the federal budget.

Our Federal budget is mostly military spending, public health care spending, and Social Security. If you really want to reduce the deficit your options are raise taxes or cut from those three. Since our tax rate is low by international and historic standard, it could be easily raise tax revenue by a modest amount.

When it comes to cuts, though, any legitimate cost benefit, efficiency or needs analysis would say radically cut the military spending is the most logical move.

The simple fact is that the United State is a nuclear power. We are a mostly geographically isolated country. We only share a border with two smaller and weaker allies. Finally, we have a well-armed and fiercely nationalist population that makes a theoretical foreign occupations a bloody nightmare.

Even if we eliminate all military spending except for the national guard, there would still be zero chance the USA would be invaded or attacked by another nation state. Achieving what should be the only real goal of our military can be done for probably about 1/40th our current spending.

Tough to argue with that.  Ponder while you're out the the trails today.

When a "Cut" is Really an Increase

Watch Weeks After Iraq Withdrawal, Obama Announces Plans to Shrink U.S. Military on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Credit to PBS, here.  The relevant segment is at 1:17 and is short.

Last week (5 Jan 2012) at the Pentagon, President Obama announced plans to restructure our defense spending.  I've been all over the usual news sources but somehow this quote, straight out of the mouth of the President, did NOT become front page news.

I found it via Corrente, who lead me thru Steve Clemons (who, by the way, thinks Obama should dredge up former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to oversee the cuts to the military), and ultimately to the PBS clip above.  Here's the transcript of the quote I want to highlight:

BARACK OBAMA: Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this. It will still grow. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration. And I firmly believe, and I think the American people understand that we can keep our military strong and our nation secure with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined.

Let me repeat that quote, lest you missed it, with highlighting:

BARACK OBAMA: Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this. It will still grow. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration. And I firmly believe, and I think the American people understand that we can keep our military strong and our nation secure with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined.

In a sane world, people all over the country would have been driven to torches and pitchforks, demanding his ouster.  You want to plus up the Pentagon and call it cutting?  And with a straight face applaud the fact that the U.S. spends more than the next 10 countries combined, and act like that's somehow a desirable statistic?  Seriously?  When children in this country are going to bed hungry?

According to CNN, here in the U.S. some 22% of U.S. children are in poverty according to the government's own statistics. 

More children in poverty: The poverty rate for children under age 18 increased to 22% in 2010, meaning more than 1 in 5 children in America are living in poverty.

 

The nation's poverty rate rose to 15.1% in 2010, its highest level since 1993. In 2009, 14.3% of people in America were living in poverty.

About 46.2 million people are now considered in poverty, 2.6 million more than last year.

The government defines the poverty line as income of $22,314 a year for a family of four and $11,139 for an individual. The Office of Management and Budget updates the poverty line each year to account for inflation.

For. The. Children.  I guess not.

 

Budget Trade-Offs

I'm beating on an old drum here, but with the present standoff over the budget and deficits, a post from Think Progress back in June is relevant. 

That post was written at the time that President Obama was set to announce his troop drawdown strategy for Afghanistan (which for the near-term only pulls out the troops he had "surged" in and so effectively isn't much of a reduction at all...in other words, the long slog in Afghanistan continues with no end in sight).  Here are some things that we gave up this year alone (FY 2011) to pay $113 billion for this war:

1. Provide 57.5 Million Children With Low-Income Health Care For 2011
2. Provide 23 Million People With Low-Income Health Coverage In 2011
3. Give 20.2 Million $5,500 Pell Grants To Students In 2011
4. Provide 14.35 million Military Veterans With VA Medical Care In 2011
5. Give 14.7 million Children Head Start Funding In 2011
6. Give 14.26 Million Scholarships To University Students In 2011
7. Employ 1.93 million Firefighters In 2011
8. Hire 1.75 Million Elementary School Teachers In 2011
9. Hire 1.65 Million Police Officers In 2011
10. Equip 67.8 Million Households With The Ability To Use Wind Power In 2011
11. Equip 25.39 Million Households With The Ability To Use Solar Photovoltaic Energy In 2011

Oh, to say nothing of the dead and maimed soldiers and civilians.  Yet a serious discussion of war funding seems not to be on the table...while cuts in our social programs for our most vulnerable citizens are. 

How misguided is that?

 

The People's Budget

The People's Budget


From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo on 13 April.  This is the kind of real world budget that makes actual sense, not the political posturing that passes for a serious go at a budget. 

Kinda reminds me of the fake fights that various animals stage, just for show.  Because if they really fight, somebody will get hurt. 

Read the whole thing, but here are a couple key points that jumped out at me: 

Representatives from the 77-member House Progressive Caucus gathered at the Capitol on Wednesday to roll out their plan to cut the deficit and put the budget back into balance. Their simple solution: pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, install a public option for health care, raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations and voila, America is fixed.

The caucus plan, known as The People's Budget, was explained in some detail by Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs last week. Today, progressive members extolled the virtues of the plan as members sat waiting for President Obama to introduce a deficit reduction plan many Democrats worried would sacrifice necessary spending on the altar of a mistaken understanding of fiscal responsibility.

"We want to cut," [Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), co-chair of the caucus] added. What's on the progressive caucus chopping block? "Eliminating unnecessary weapons systems from the Defense Department, eliminating huge tax credits for oil and gas industries, eliminating subsidies for new nuclear power plans," Grijalva said.

The plan would "eliminate the deficit," supporters say, and put the nation budget in surplus by 2021.

I previously blogged about the budget here.  The theme is the same.

 

The Fix for the U.S. Budget

From They Gave Us a Republic, a simple fix for our budget woes.  I could get behind this one, for sure. 

The solution is NOT to tinker aound the edges of only trimming discretionary spending; no, there must be increases to revenue as well. 

Somehow that basic Accounting 101 fact seems to elude our leaders.

I've got a better plan for returning the country to prosperity. Here it is.

Withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Cut all defense spending by 50%.
Restore all tax rates to 1981 levels - across the board.
Double the Estate Tax.
Pass a millionaire's tax.
Eliminate the mortgage interest deduction >$500,000.
Eliminate mortgage interest deduction on vacation homes.
Eliminate corporate tax loopholes.
Eliminate tax breaks for Big Oil.
Eliminate Big Farm subsidies.
Pass a carbon tax.
Pass a bank tax.

Problem solved.

Now when do I get breathlessly praised for my serious, courageous leadership?