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House Panel Authorizes Nearly $700 Billion in Defense Spending
The House Armed Services Committee early Thursday approved a spending measure that clears the Pentagon and Energy Department to spend nearly $700 billion next fiscal year.
The panel approved a baseline Pentagon spending level of $553 billion, matching the Obama administration's request. It also authorized the Energy Department to spend $18 billion on nuclear weapons projects, and cleared the military to spend $118 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The $690 billion defense authorization measure is expected to hit the House floor the week of May 23, according to aides.
The marathon markup began Wednesday morning and stretched into the early morning hours of Thursday.
As one day became another, the committee approved an amendment aimed at delaying a repeal of the ban on openly gay military service members. Democrats threw out the so-called “Don't ask, don't tell” policy last year during a lame-duck legislative session, against the wishes of most Republicans.
The provision approved by the panel would add the four service chiefs to the list of military leaders that must certify the military to official end the ban. The services are in the midst of training personnel on how they should behave in the post-“Don’t ask” era.
Experts see the amendment — which has brought the ire of gay groups — as a delaying tactic, with even those who supported it acknowledging the chiefs inevitably will sign on.
Panel Republicans pushed through language reiterating that the U.S. is at war with al Qaeda and the Taliban, with Democrats charging they are looking to use it as a tool in the policy debate over detainees.
The committee engaged in a sometimes-testy partisan debate over various amendments brought by Republicans that would put a number of stipulations on the New START nuclear weapons reduction treaty the Obama administration hammered out last year with Russia. The Senate has ratified that pact, but House GOP members want to make sure this — and future — presidents live up to terms of the deal made to secure ratification.
To get GOP support in the Senate, President Obama agreed to spend billions to upgrade America's existing nuclear arsenal.
The House Armed Services panel approved several amendments that would require presidential notification if specific aspects of the nation's nuclear targeting strategy are changed and keep "forward-deployed nuclear forces ... based in Europe."
Another New START amendment would limit the executive branch's ability to spend funds between 2011 and 2017 to retire any system covered by the U.S.-Russia treaty. Democrats charged the amendment was too broad and undefined, with several claiming it would "tie the hands" of Obama and future presidents.
It does, however, contain an out for the executive branch, stating such retirements can move forward if the secretaries of Energy and Defense "may jointly waive the limitation" in a written notification to Congress.
On Wednesday afternoon, the committee adopted a provision that would trigger a competition to build F-35 fighter engine if certain improvements are made to the primary power plant. The panel also killed an amendment to strip $380 million from the F-35 program by cutting the planned buy of the Marines' B variant by two jets.
On nearly all major hardware programs, the committee's bill includes the funding levels sought by the Obama administration.
One exception was a big-ticket missile program, however.
After a heated exchange between senior Democratic and Republican panel members, the committee agreed to propose adding $100 million to the Ground Based Midcourse Defense missile program. As a part of that debate, Republicans agreed to add the same amount to the bill for National Guard and Reserve equipment by taking $100 million from a troubled project to place an advanced sensor on a C-12 aircraft.
The debate got so intense that, at its conclusion, panel Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) advised his members to "calm down" as the committee prepared for a dinner break.
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47 Comments so far
Show AllThis is INSANE! Our nation is bankrupt and the dollar is about to collapse in value. Many of us are out of work, have lost our homes, have lost our savings for retirement, can't afford health care, and terrible cuts are planned for all of our domestic programs and the government wants MORE MONEY FOR WAR?!
We have no right to invade and occupy any foreign nations. We are not fighting terrorism, we ARE a terrorist nation.
Our government is not responsive to the people of this nation. Our democracy has died and we the people must rise up in rebellion.
Well said.
Hit the nail on the head.
I think it's time WE THE PEOPLE write a new Declaration of Independence.
Hell, just really READ the original, then act upon it. The conditions we were rebelling against have returned, but this time they originate on this side of the pond, and are much more severe.
I agree, but would like to make the appropriate adjustments, cite specifics, and create a formal statement of our absolute rejection of this corrupt government. Then I'd like to see it signed by the people of this country, and delivered to Washington by the largest group of protesters those elitist corporate assholes hiding within their ivory tower have ever laid their greedy eyes upon. As we are the mat beneath their feet, we can surely move to yank it out from under them.
Agreed, the current one declaring, We The Property, isn't working so well.
It is interesting that in all these budget discussions -- severe debt crisis threatening the U.S. fiscal integrity and all that -- looking at defense spending barely even gets mentioned. Maybe in a quick aside someone will add "and Defense" just to get it on the record that it was said.
The global empire is one of the biggest things bankrupting us -- morally, as wantrealdemocracy points out -- and economically.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953
Who can sum up the horrors and woes accumulated in a single war?...War comes with its bloody hand into our very dwellings. It takes from ten thousand homes those who lived there in peace and comfort, held by the tender ties of family and kindred. It drags them away to die untended, of fever, or exposure, in infectious climes; or to be hacked, torn, and mangled in the fierce fight; to fall on the gory field, to rise no more, or to be borne away in awful agony, to noisome and horrid hospitals. The groans of the battlefield are echoed in sighs of bereavement from thousands of desolated hearths. There is a skeleton in every house, a vacant chair at every table. Returning, the soldier brings worse sorrow home, by the infection which he has caught, of camp-vices. The country is demoralized. The national mind is brought down, from the noble interchange of kind offices with another people, to wrath and revenge, and base pride, and the habit of measuring brute strength against brute strength, in battle. Treasures are expended, that would suffice to build ten thousand churches, hospitals, and universities, or rib and tie together a continent with rails of iron. If that treasure were sunk in the sea, it would be calamity enough; but it is put to worse use; for it is expended in cutting into the veins and arteries of human life, until the earth is deluged with a sea of blood.
And:
When office and wealth become the gods of a people, and the most unworthy and unfit most aspire to the former and fraud becomes the highway to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies and chicane. When the offices are open to all, merit and stern integrity and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only rarely and by accident.
Albert Pike
1809-1891
He was a very wise man.
This is an excellent quote-thanks for posting it. Now more than ever we need to act on it. If it isnt too late!
Your wrong we are WAR. A small minority of our nation with fabulous wealth has declared War on the rest of us! We are in the midst of another CIVIL WAR hiding behind a Class War.
Ditto on that one man!!
Youre absolutely correct. This is lunacy! We need to stop wars and start repairing this country.
Ugly is as ugly does, evil is as evil does!
at least obama includes the cost of war in the regular budget
however
is this their version of shared sacrifice??? who is sharing in the sacrifice, those people on the receiving end of their weapons???
At the same time they're pushing Pentagon spending to new extremes, they're continuing to demand cuts in taxes for the ruling class -- the one social class in the US that supports war. I'm reminded of the turds Bush and Cheney, who "supported" the Vietnam War but expected others to fight it for them.
"This is INSANE". Indeed.
"Out of war, a few people make huge fortunes. Nations acquire additional territory [which is promptly exploited by the few for their won benefit], and the general public shoulders the bill-a bill that renders a horrible accounting of newly placed gravestones, mangled bodies, shattered minds, broken hearts and homes, economic instability, and back-breaking taxation of the many for generations and generations." -General Smedley Butler
"The church allows people to believe that they can be good Christians and yet draw dividends from armament factories, can be good Christians and yet imperil the well-being of their fellows by speculating in stocks and shares, can be good Christians and yet be imperialists, yet participate in war." -Aldous Leonard Huxley [1894-1963], English author
......like nardee well children in a mall with mom's charge card.
Clearly the only response to Peak Oil, Peak Water, Global Warming and Imperial/Economic Collapse is to be ready to kill absolutely everybody. The US is going to find itself broke and beset by enormously expensive unnatural disasters, flooded coastal cities, droughts, etc and it will be crying in the night like an old junky who wishes he had all the money he used to spend on dope.
Just goes to show, government does not serve the people. Government and the Too Big to Fail WAR Profiteers are one and the same. That's why I find it so sorry when people actually think the government are going to do good things for them like, create jobs, health care or whatever it is people think the government is going to do for them -- government & corporations are one in the same.
In order to End the Wars & to Save the people of this Land (and stop the killing around the world) We need to END the government, End the Fed - NOT Grow it more or empower it more to "educate" the people or whatever else.
The people themselves, ourselves need to be the ones who take care of ourselves, create our own jobs and educate our own communities.
Big is Bad. Big Government, Big Corporations, BIG Oil, Pharma, whatever it is all one and the same!!
Each year about 45,000 die due to lack of affordable health care, almost 100,000 die from polluted air. Who are the real terrorists?
Totalitarian capitalism is a bad thing. We will pay dearly if nothing is done. We are already paying dearly now.
The headline is Orwellian, it should read: HOUSE PANEL AUTHORIZES NEARLY 700 BILLION IN OFFENSE SPENDING. The American war budget has nothing at all to do with the defense of America, but it has everything to do with the defense of American hegemony, hubris and the world wide corportocracy of American Empire. International bankers, Wall Street, the CIA and the Pentagon need to be drowned in a bathtub and smashed into a thousand pieces. Unfortunately the chances of this happening is between slim and none and Slim just left town!
Yes, it is patently insane, but we would have absolutely NO identity without this insane, obscenely bloated military budget, that realistically is over $1 trillion per year, when all "defense" related spending is factored in. It's the one truly untouchable category of the annual federal budget, no matter how many times Kucinich and a tiny handful of other congressmen may object.
Objections to hyper-militarism fall on deaf ears in Washington, the same as calls for universal health care, indicting war criminals like Bush, Cheney and Obama, making corporations pay taxes commensurate with their stratospheric profits, doing anything at all to address global warming, funding and developing alternative energy systems, paying more than token attention to structural unemployment, or anything else that actually addresses the real needs of actual human beings.
We will never get any semblance of justice from these bastards, we'll only get more war all the time, more useless spending and preparing for war, more realpolitik diplomacy to create as many enemies as we possibly can so we can spend ourselves bankrupt on WAR. These misrepresentatives recognize one god and only one god: Mars, as Siouxrose always points out. They are killing us all, they are killing the planet, and they need to be stopped. Voting for any of these corporate, warmongering vermin is nothing but shooting ourselves in both feet and then expecting to run a marathon.
>>obscenely bloated military budget, that realistically is over $1 trillion per year, when all "defense" related spending is factored in.<<
I read in one report on CD that it is $1.2 Trillion.
Posting on CD is like being in an alternate universe.
And all tangible assets are owned by China. Communists, no less. Better dead than red?
Wasn't the McCarthy era all about 'the war on Communism' and now they actually own the USA through debt? Following that logic, now that we have 'the war on terror' does this mean that the USA will be owned by terrorists next?
It already is, you say?
Has been since November, 1963.
Yes, Ephraim, 'defense' spending is over $1 trillion annually, when you factor it all in: weapons acquisition, wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, percentage of spending on debt directly due to wars. It is disgusting and outrageous. I don't know anyone--left right or center--who favors this gigantic obscene 'defense' budget, or even knows it is this grotesquely high.
Time for complete nonviolent non-cooperation.
General strikes! Boycotts! Civil disobedience!
End the tyranny by the Military Industrial Media Complex.
Earlier I mentioned that I read a CD report, some weeks ago, that stated the US spends $1.2 Trillion a year all told on "defense". However, I seriously doubt whether this includes the INTEREST on the money borrowed specifically for the military. If the $600 billion a year we pay in interest on the national debt is factored in, and if the US spends something like 53% of its yearly budget on the military, then we might speculate that we are paying $300 billion a year on interest on borrowed funds earmarked for the military, making our total expenditure something like $1.6 trillion for "defense".
Madness. Insanity. PARANOIA.
Damn, if the military hasn't turned into one great big money laundering venture. It hasn't been hard at all for a long time to realize that the true traitors, terrorists, thieves, hooligans, thugs and arrogant treasonous assholes reside in the u. s. military. All of them fighting for pet projects with very little and nothing to do with reality, that will benefit them in their 'golden years and parachutes'. Everything they are doing was and probably still is against the law. But there is NOBODY BUT FOXES GUARDING THE GOLDEN GOOSE LAYING THOSE GOLDEN EGGS IN THE HEN HOUSE.
And the military's special envoy is the M$M of this country where people just come in, plop down and turn on their 'favorite' channel to see who won, who lost, who was fucking whom and all the other fluff and bullshit that is constantly pouring out of its sewage pipes. So it is NO WONDER AT ALL why people are not seen being as upset and outraged as they should be over news like this. THAT IS PART AN PARCEL OF THE DANGERS OF THE NEOCONSERVATIVE OWNED M$M AND THE LACK OF OPPOSING VIEW POINTS OR THE OTHER SIDE OF M$M CRAP, and we owe that to old rawhide himself, rear end ronnie reagan who so gallantly trashed the fairness doctrine that mandated the opposite view and investigative reporting since the neocons were in charge of the information system in this country.
So what to do:
1. Bust the vertically and horizontally integrated monopolies of the M$M back into 75 or 100 owners of all view points. This low number of neocon owners owes its debt of gratitude to slick willie when he signed the the FCC act of the 1990s, under the guise of promoting digital t.v., which allowed few owners to buy and control the M$M venues. Reinstall the fairness doctrine for opposing view points.
2. Make lobbying the crime of bribery that it is and mandate that law enforcement and the judiciary do their jobs in policing the and apprehending both the briber and the one being bribed.
3. Get control of the military money laundering house and start going after those treasonous traitors of this country who are using said money laundering schemes to benefit themselves financially, politically and power.
I doubt anything of the such will be done and I don't know what the end to this goddamned infection in the country will end up as in the future, but as the future can't be predicted anymore that the weather can, history sure has many samples of what is in store.
Fear mongering, war mongering, graft taking, lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, reactionary conservative greedheads passed this. Some of us prefer to call them "neo-liberals" which sounds more like the "liberals" we've been con-ditioned to self-hate.
Good evening
Bad news today for all the westerners…You must probably read Gibbon and his "The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire" to be in the mood with your GOP representatives.. After all, they reign over the world!!! Thanks to you.
Those which neurons still available (it seems a lot, here, on this tiny little part of the planet) would prefer Arnold Toynbee and his "study of history". But after all, we're lost definitively… Its just reading to forget the surrounding world, YOU, impose to the rest of the world…No shame, no rage… just a pity, things are going on !!!
Chris
"Those which neurons still available (it seems a lot, here, on this tiny little part of the planet) would prefer Arnold Toynbee and his "study of history".
Thank you, Chris. You are the first person I've heard or seen mention Toynbee. He was a very wise man. In those twelve volumes, you can watch the panoply of history unfold, see the same mistakes perpetrated by empire after empire, watch the efforts of some of the guiding lights of history to change our course. Watch the empires suppress this repeatedly, often martyring those guiding lights if they actually seem to be leading to change.
I wrote the poem below when we were being Bushwhacked, but unfortunately it seems even more true in the Obamanation.
----------------------------------------------
Hubris Uber Alles
Astride the known world,
Filled with hubris
They marched in their turn:
Darius, Xerxes, Agamemnon, Alexander,
Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler and more
All their empires rising, conquering,
Their passing marked by mounds of skulls
And vainglorious boasts.
Their places taken in turn by others
as their empires rotted from within.
Now yet another warlord stands,
His nation’s proud banner, once a beacon
Of freedom and hope to all mankind,
Now a symbol to be feared
By friend and foe alike.
This, too, shall pass away
After adding its quota of skulls to the mountain,
While the common man around the world
Holds tight the dream of Brotherhood and Peace
Close to his breaking heart.
Steve Osborn
9 August 2003
----------------------------------------------
And so it goes, it seems.
Yep, just "calm down" and let us destroy the U.S. and the Earth.
There's so many of us.
It's already started in the city. The suburbs will be easy.
"Let's Have a War" --A Perfect Circle. http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Let%27s-Have-A-War-lyrics-A-Perfect-Circle/3B7FBC2845B0D9DE48256F24002A8085
Why is it that it seems like so many times THE WORST PEOPLE are in charge? Whether at work, our government, the media, everywhere, the major A-holes with hard heads are ruining everything.
They are evil because they have the most money, the root of all evil and power
The current inflation of middle/low income Merkans' tax allocation to empire-building is part of an ongoing trend, nothing new, and shall not be alarming to Merkans, who are "comfortably numb" after their intravenous injections of petro-opiates. More, more, more petro-opiates. They are the cure. But it doesn't have to be.
I like that, "Merkans". Reminds me of LBJ.
Huxley was right on point about Christians. Why don't they follow their own Gods commandments? What is it about "Not Kill" that they don't understand? Eighty-five percent of Americans claim to be Christian. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray my job making cluster bombs I will keep,and if some die before I wake. I pray tomorrow for more bombs to make. Jesus loves me and the M I C. It's a good thing for the rest of the world that we love peace, justice,and Jesus as much as we do.
When we draft the new constitution, it'll be for the Secular States of America, so help me god.
Mars and Mammon had a farm
Ai-yi-yi-yi-oh!
The defense department continues to be the second most powerful, with corporate america being the most powerful, branch of our "government". It is easy to see why. The powerful republican party is in charge of giving money to a military that is out of control. The weak democrats,including the weak democratic president, cannot control or even provide oversight for the obscene military spending. The continued spending on programs which have showed failure in their design or have proven incapable of performing the job the system was designed to do. The missile defense system that was so highly touted as the ultimate defense against incoming missiles fired by an enemy was proven ineffective and the money spent in its development wasted, will receive more money if the defense bill is passed as is.
The F-35 fighter currently being built or is soon to be built, is a complete waste of money.The fighter plane could probably be compared to the F-22, which is a failure under most weather conditions. And how much money is still being spent on a plane that cant fly in the rain!!?
The money that has been spent on pipe dreams at the expense of other economic problems is unbelievable. But nothing is being done to correct the problem. If we had a president and a congress with any guts these problems could be solved...........but the beat goes on.
COST PLUS
(based on info by writer Andrew Cockburn)
"...the contractors are 'selling costs' not weapons systems..."
Andrew Cockburn has written eloquently on the defense contracting
system in a recent article in COUNTERPUNCH, March 16-31,2011,
Vol. 18, No. 6, "Why the US Defense Budget Soars, Even as Military
Shrinks", beginning on p. 1. Note especially p. 3, cols. 2-3 excerpted
below.
"...Key to the process, and to the enormous ensuing costs, was the
system of 'cost plus' contracts instituted in WW II that endures to this
day. So long as the contractors are guaranteed a percentage of their
costs as profit, they have an obvious incentive to make those costs as
great as possible.
A contract to produce 100 missiles at a cost of $1 billion can yield a $50
million dollar profit. Ergo, if suddenly ...the cost zooms to $2 billion,
then the profit accordingly leapt to $100 million. It makes no difference
at all if...the cost of the individual missiles has increased so much that
the $2 billion now buys only 50 missiles or 10...or ultimately just one.
The bottom line is unaffected.
In other words, the contractors are 'selling costs' not weapons systems.
To the extent that they can improve their products by making them more
complex and thus more expensive, they prosper..."
Please note that the government lets the contracts. The contractors are private
profit-making corporations. Thus the point that private corporations can
resolve any problems is a fabrication.
If you find many Senators,Congressmen, Members of the Administration who
will voluntarily give up the private defense contracts in their districts, let
me know.
email: peterloeb@yahoo.com
"The debate got so intense that, at its conclusion, panel Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) advised his members to "calm down" as the committee prepared for a dinner break."
Yeah, calm down every one. This is just a big poker game and the American middle and poor class are the patsies. Now let's go eat a big Omaha steak recommended by our pal Warren Buffett before we go back to giving people the business. Woops! I meant doing the people's business, of course.
The phrase "budget deficit" makes me puke! What a lying bunch of crap. Thanks Paul R. Department of offense is much more accurate. I hope you don't mind if I use that in future discussions, rants or arguments I have with idiots out there that think they are safer with every extra dollar spent.