In his last official speech as President, Dwight Eisenhower warned the country about the burgeoning power, influence and expense of what he termed the “military-industrial complex”. The career Army officer was the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in the European Theater during WWII, so he knew whereof he spoke.
Since his day, US military expenditures have done nothing but grow, until they’ve reached a point where we routinely spend more on our Armed Forces than the next dozen or so nations combined. In such vast operations, boondoggles and huge cost overruns became so common that estimates were a sad joke on the American public. Even movies made fun of military costs and funding cover-ups. The 1996 blockbuster Independence Day when Air Force One landed at Area 51 and the President and his party viewed the vast underground research facility:
President Thomas Whitmore : I don’t understand, where does all this come from? How do you get funding for something like this?
Julius Levinson : You don’t actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?
And now the subject has come up again. The country is a week or so away from yet another Republican mandated government shutdown. The fractured GOP Caucus in the House of Representatives is at odds with itself over exactly which initiatives and institutions should be funded and which should not. But what they all seem to agree on is that all military spending should be untouched and all cuts – averaging about 8% – should come from domestic programs. To make these proposals even more vomit-worthy, we saw this coming.
The 2017 tax cuts greatly inflated both our national debt and the wallets of the wealthy and major corporations. Republicans were all on board with the cuts; some actually talked about the thoroughly debunked “trickle-down” benefits. As many of us predicted, the average American saw little of these benefits. Corporations took their gift and bought back their own stock, increasing the wealth of their boards of directors. Rich folks sent large portions of their unearned booty into offshore accounts. Very little money was actually spent on building factories or expanding workforces. And now the House GOP is crying that “We have no money!” and “Let’s take 8% of the food from the mouths of poor kids and other protections away from them and their families!” Dammit, the Navy needs more ships and the Air Force more planes. The rich folks need bigger boats and houses. Corporate CEOs are squeaking by on only 20 or 30 million dollars a year. We have to help them out.
And so the story goes.