Jo Comerford: War Taxes Are Killing Us

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175231/tomgram%3A_jo_comerford%2C_yo

Tomgram: Jo Comerford, Your Taxes and War

Posted by Jo Comerford at 6:10pm, April 11, 2010.

If you’re an average American taxpayer, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have, since 2001, cost you personally $7,334, according to the “cost of war” counter created by the National Priorities Project (NPP). They have cost all Americans collectively more than $980,000,000,000. As a country, we’ll pass the trillion dollar mark soon. These are staggering figures and, despite the $72.3 billion that Congress has already ponied up for the Afghan War in 2010 ($136.8 billion if you add in Iraq), the administration is about to go back to Congress for more than $35 billion in outside-the-budget supplemental funds to cover the president’s military and civilian Afghan surges. When that passes, as it surely will, the cumulative cost of the Afghan War alone will hit $300 billion, and we’ll be heading for two trillion-dollar wars.

In the meantime, just so you know, that $300 billion, according to the NPP, could have paid for healthcare for 131,780,734 American children for a year, or for 53,872,201 students to receive Pell Grants of $5,550, or for the salaries and benefits of 4,911,552 elementary school teachers for that same year.

April 15th is almost upon us, and Jo Comerford, TomDispatch regular as well as the NPP’s executive director, decided to take a look at one restive American community under the gun (so to speak) as tax day rolls around again. Our wars seem -- and are -- so far away, so divorced from American lives. If someone you know well hasn’t been wounded or killed in one of them, it can be hard to grasp just how they are also wounding this society. Here’s one way. (Check out as well Timothy MacBain's latest TomCast audio interview in which Comerford discusses military spending and the federal budget by clicking here or, if you prefer to download it to your iPod, here.) - Tom

now. This is insane.

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/taxday2010">Right there. And yet only hours ago http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8141521&mesg_id=8141521">DU assured me it was 53%.

That's a big fucking spread, even if I add NPP's 3.5% for Veterans Affairs. Which is it?

We are all entitled to our own opinions, but is it too much to ask for a single set of facts??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States

Budget for 2010

For the 2010 fiscal year, the president's base budget of the Department of Defense rose to $533.8 billion. Adding spending on "overseas contingency operations" brings the sum to $663.8 billion.<1><2>

When the budget was signed into law on October 28, 2009, the final size of the Department of Defense's budget was $680 billion, $16 billion more than President Obama had requested.<3><4> Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff expected an additional supplemental spending bill, possibly in the range of $40–50 billion, by the Spring of 2010 in order to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<5> Defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $216 billion and $361 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.<6>

Emergency and supplemental spending

The recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were largely funded through supplementary spending bills outside the Federal Budget, so they are not included in the military budget figures listed below.<7> In addition, the Pentagon has access to black budget military spending for special programs which is not listed as Federal spending and is not included in published military spending figures. Starting in the fiscal year 2010 budget however, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are categorized as "Overseas Contingency Operations" and included in the budget.

By the end of 2008, the U.S. had spent approximately $900 billion in direct costs on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Indirect costs such as interest on the additional debt and incremental costs of caring for the more than 33,000 wounded borne by the Veterans Administration are additional. Some experts estimate these indirect costs will eventually exceed the direct costs.<8>

By title
The federally budgeted (see below) military expenditure of the United States Department of Defense for fiscal year 2010, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is<9>:
Components Funding Change, 2009 to 2010
Operations and maintenance $283.3 billion +4.2%
Military Personnel $154.2 billion +5.0%
Procurement $140.1 billion −1.8%
Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation $79.1 billion +1.3%
Military Construction $23.9 billion +19.0%
Family Housing $3.1 billion −20.2%
Total Spending $685.1 billion +3.0%
By service
Service 2010 Budget request<10> Percentage of Total
Army $225.2 billion 33.9%
Navy/Marine Corps $171.7 billion 25.9%
Air Force $160.5 billion 24.2%
Defense Wide $106.4 billion 16.0%
Programs spending more than $1 billion
The FY 2009 $104.2 billion procurement and $79.6 billion RDT&E budgets appropriated several programs with more than $1 billion.
Program 2009 Budget request<11><12> Change, 2008 to 2009
Missile Defense $9.4 billion +8.0%
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter $6.9 billion +6.2%
Carrier Replacement Program $4.2 billion +23.5%
F-22 Raptor $4.1 billion −6.8%
Virginia class submarine $3.9 billion +14.7%
Future Combat System $3.3 billion −2.9%
DDG 1000 Destroyer $3.2 billion −8.6%
C-17 $3.0 billion
V-22 Osprey $2.7 billion +3.8%
Space-Based Infrared System $2.3 billion +130.0%
F/A-18E/F Hornet $2.0 billion −4.8%
MH-60R/S $1.9 billion +72.7%
EA-18G Growler $1.8 billion +12.5%
Chemical Demilitarization $1.6 billion +0.0%
Stryker $1.3 billion +18.2%
Littoral combat ship $1.3 billion +116.7%
CH-47 Chinook $1.2 billion +9.1%
P-8A Poseidon $1.2 billion +33.3%
Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle $1.2 billion +9.1%
UH-60 Black Hawk $1.1 billion −26.7%
E-2C/D Hawkeye $1.1 billion +22.2%
Trident II Ballistic Missile $1.1 billion +0.0%
Mobile User Objective System $1.0 billion +25.0%

Other defense-related expenditures

Per-capita Defense Spending 1962-2015 (inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars)

Defense Spending 1962-2015 (inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars)<13><14>

This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA.

Support service contractors


Military budget and total US federal spending

Fiscal Year 2009 U.S. Federal Spending – Cash or Budget Basis

The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 25–29% of budgeted expenditures and 38–44% of estimated tax revenues. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000–2009.<19>

Because of constitutional limitations, military funding is appropriated in a discretionary spending account. (Such accounts permit government planners to have more flexibility to change spending each year, as opposed to mandatory spending accounts that mandate spending on programs in accordance with the law, outside of the budgetary process.) In recent years, discretionary spending as a whole has amounted to about one-third of total federal outlays.<20> Military funding's share of discretionary funding was 50.5% in 2003, and has risen steadily ever since.<21>

For FY 2010, Department of Defense spending amounts to 4.7% of GDP.<22> Because the U.S. GDP has risen over time, the military budget can rise in absolute terms while shrinking as a percentage of the GDP. For example, the Department of Defense budget is slated to be $664 billion in 2010 (including the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan previously funded through supplementary budget legislation<23><24>), higher than at any other point in American history, but still 1.1–1.4% lower as a percentage of GDP than the amount spent on defense during the peak of Cold-War military spending in the late 1980s.<22> Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called four percent an "absolute floor".<25> This calculation does not take into account some other defense-related non-DOD spending, such as Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and interest paid on debt incurred in past wars, which has increased even as a percentage of the national GDP.

In order to get close to that $216-$361 billion number, you'd have to add the entirety of Homeland Security, Is Immigration Services now part of the war effort??