We Have the Bailout Money--We're Spending It on War

[pnorman]

By Chalmers Johnson

There has been much moaning, air-sucking and outrage about the $700 billion that the US government is thinking of throwing away on rich New York bankers who have been ripping us off for the past few years and then letting greed drive their businesses into a variety of ditches. In fact, we dole out similar amounts of money every year in the form of payoffs to the armed services, the military-industrial complex and powerful senators and representatives allied with the Pentagon.

On Wednesday, September 24, right in the middle of the fight over billions of taxpayer dollars slated to bail out Wall Street, the House of Representatives passed a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without a murmur of public protest or any meaningful press comment at all. (The New York Times gave the matter only three short paragraphs buried in a story about another appropriations measure.)

The defense bill includes $68.6 billion to pursue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is only a down payment on the full yearly cost of these wars. (The rest will be raised through future supplementary bills.) It also included a 3.9 percent pay raise for military personnel, and $5 billion in pork-barrel projects not even requested by the administration or the Secretary of Defense. It also fully funds the Pentagon's request for a radar site in the Czech Republic, a harebrained scheme sure to infuriate the Russians just as much as a Russian missile base in Cuba once infuriated us. The whole bill passed by a vote of 392-39 and will fly through the Senate, where a similar bill has already been approved. And no one will even think to mention it in the same breath with the discussion of bailout funds for dying investment banks and the like.
*
*
*

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081013/johnson

[dkofos]

1. That's 1/2 a TRILLION too much as far as I'm concerned.

[Betsy Ross]

2. YES.

Link the bail-out to a pull-out from Iraq.

[Critters2]

I'd back that. We should talk it up and tell our Congresscritters.

Enough spending money we don't have. We need to start cutting unnecessary expenses.

[TheCowsCameHome]

3. I wish someone in DC would point this out.

It's disgraceful how much we've pissed away in that rathole in the desert.