The fearmongering is on. Here's a typical article, this one from the only daily newspaper in my hometown:
"Defense spending could face large loss from federal cuts"By: NATE DELESLINE III | Email address removed | 978-7243
"Published: September 17, 2012
"Charlottesville Daily Progress
"Charlottesville and Albemarle County could see a potential loss of $46.5 million in defense-related spending if federally mandated cuts, which are slated to start next year, come to fruition."
There are several ways in which this is misleading. First, "defense" here means military, whether or not defensive. Second, "cuts" in Washington-talk includes reductions in a budget from one year to the next, OR reductions from a desired dream-budget to a less-desired budget, even one that is an increase over last year's. For the past 13 years, military spending has grown to levels not seen since World War II. It's over half of federal discretionary spending, and as much as the rest of the world combined. The Pentagon's budget grew each year George W. Bush was president and the first three years that Barack Obama was president. It is being cut by 2.6% this year, not the 9% used to calculate a portion of that $46.5 million figure. If the mandated cuts mentioned above go through, the Pentagon will still be spending next year more than it did in 2006 at the height of the war on Iraq.
In addition, military contractors have been bringing in more federal dollars while cutting jobs. They employed fewer people in 2011 with bigger contracts than in 2006 with smaller ones. So the logic of bigger contracts = more jobs is essentially a bucket of hope and change.
And the Pentagon's base budget is less than half of total military spending. It's necessary to add in war spending (over $80 billion nationally this year), nuclear weapons spending through the Department of Energy, military operations through the State Department, USAID, and the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, etc., to get the real total. The Pentagon also has $83 billion in unobligated balances it can draw on.
The war industries in the United States are also by no means limited to the U.S. government. U.S. weapons makers brought in $66.3 billion last year from foreign governments. Many of those governments, like our own, are engaged in horrendous human rights abuses, but as long as we're being sociopathic about job creation, there's no reason to leave this out.
The article continues:
"The figures - compiled by the Center for Security Policy and the Coalition for the Common Defense, conservative-leaning Washington, D.C.-based think tanks - are based on publicly available information on Department of Defense contracts compiled and made available online through the Federal Procurement Data System website.
"The coalition describes itself as a group of individuals and local and national organizations 'committed to the Constitutional imperative to provide for the common defense and returning the United States to sensible fiscal principles without sacrificing its national security.'"
Never mind that the Constitution was written to include the creation of armies in times of war, not the permanent maintenance of a military industrial complex as a jobs program. The above is how the two groups pushing the "news" in this article describe themselves. How would a journalist describe them? Well, as long as they're promoting military spending, it seems most relevant and significant to describe the ways in which they benefit from that spending.
The Center for Security Policy has a board of advisors packed with weapons makers executives and lobbyists from such disinterested parties as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, TRW, Raytheon, Ball Aerospace & Technologies, and Hewlett-Packard. The Coalition for the Common Defense has been maneuvering the anti-spending Tea Party behind massive military spending. Hence the Constitution-talk. But the "Coalition" isn't run by Constitutional scholars. It's dominated by weapons company lobbyists, including the Aerospace Industry Association, which represents Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Honeywell, L-3 Communications, and other military industry corporations. The Aerospace Industry Association spends over $2 million a year lobbying our government in Washignton. Much of that money ends up being spent on luxurious lobbyist lifestyles in the great Commonwealth of Virginia. Never forget the danger of the loss of that source of job creation should Congress simply and unquestioningly take direction from the weapons makers.
The article goes on:
"The data is reported by fiscal year and does not include grants or loans.
"From 2000-2011, more than 14,000 Virginia businesses provided defense-related goods and services, according to a state level report prepared by for Common Defense.
"Based on fiscal year 2011 defense contract date, the estimated reduction in Albemarle County in 2013 would be $43.25 million; in the city, the reduction would be an estimated $3.25 million.
"Earlier this year, defense budgets were cut by about $487 billion, an average of a 9 percent cut over a decade. In addition, the reports reflect the impact of sequestration, a 2011 mandate for about $500 billion more in defense spending reductions from 2013-2021, which averages to about an overall 18 percent cut in defense spending."
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