In the movie Independence Day, the president of the United States walks into a secret laboratory, Area 51, which for the past fifty years has been conducting research on alien life -- a laboratory he knew nothing about. He turns to his secretary of defense and says, "How did we pay for all this?" One of the characters pipes up in the background, "You don't think those toilet seats really cost $6000?" The audience laughed; they got the joke: Pentagon budgets are as alien as the creatures suspended in formaldehyde in Area 51.
Something just as alien happened recently as the Republicans in Congress pushed to give the Pentagon $265 billion in the midst of a peacetime economic expansion, which includes billions of dollars the Pentagon never asked for and has admitted not knowing how to spend. As a cherry for the top of this dessert, the Republicans also want to kick in an anti-missile defense system for good measure (Star Wars seeming to have slipped from their collective memory).
While this largesse may not be listed in the physician's desk reference as a symptom of insanity, it is exactly that. At a time when the government is savaging programs which actually keep people alive, it proposes adding money to an institution whose sole purpose for being is to destroy people. Furthermore, it directly contradicts the stated fiscal philosophies of the Republicans, concerned as they are that federal dollars, if they must be spent at all, should produce as much economic ripple effect as possible. But even studies from such self-described conservative organizations as the Hoover Institute and the Heritage Foundation demonstrate that dollars invested in military hardware have a less dynamic effect on the economy than those same dollars invested in civilian research and development. The logic is simple: military matériel is created in the hope that it will never have to be used, which makes it a static and unproductive commodity. On the other hand, consumer goods are made with the expectation that everyone will want to use them, thus building up velocity in the economy and spreading more wealth among more people.
The Republican approach has to change. Recent polls have shown that while Americans may believe government on any level cannot do anything successfully, they also recognize that government does have a positive role to play in ensuring the social and economic security of its citizens. But without reducing the military budget, there will simply be no way to pay for any programs people may want to secure for themselves the blessings of liberty and abundance.
Here's a simple illustration of that fact, put out by the National Priorities Project of Northampton, MA. Let's say, as our capitalist masters are wont to say, that time is money. Furthermore, let's say that 89 hours equals the income tax paid by the average Boston area worker. The number of hours that that worker will need to put in for his or her portion of the Pentagon budget: 69 hours. For schools: 3 hours. For Head Start and WIC: 1½ hours. For public transit: 10 minutes. Even the most ardent patriot would have to agree that, with these kinds of proportions, the Pentagon budget begins to look like Eddie Murphy's nutty professor.
This insanity needs to stop. We can never have a rational debate about spending priorities, justice, progress, and the common wealth until this make-work program called the military budget is put on the agenda and examined without the distortions of patriotism, institutional duplicity, and our long national history of militarism. What's the point of having a defense capability second to none if the practical result of such investments means the streets fill up with the dispossessed and every other initiative that builds life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness stands starved and ham-strung? The only ones who will be defended by this Republican potlatch are the stockholders of Rockwell, Lockheed, and McDonnell-Douglas.
It's time to set things right, and there are ways to do this. Representative Barney Frank, speaking at Harvard University on July 14, called for voters to annoy their representatives into bringing the issue up for national debate. Organizations such as the National Priorities Project, WAND, and the Center for Campus Organizing, among dozens of others, are conducting educational programs nationwide to get people up to speed on the issue. Ralph Nader, as part of his presidential run, stresses the need to rein in corporate welfare, and it might be good to have such a man in the White House to stand down the military-industrial complex.
In other words, we have options; we don't have to endure this if we don't want to. Let's not endure it any more.
(July 1996)