What if I told you there was a way to cut $60 billion out of our military spending, without actually affecting our military capability, and invest that money in schools, medical care, and homeland security? Believe it.
Democrats have introduced H.R. 4898, the Common Sense Budget Act of 2006, which would do just that. “But that would hurt our military!” Not true. In fact, the programs targeted for cuts were mostly designed to fight the Soviets, or already have better, cheaper alternatives in place. The bill is based on a report by Dr. Lawrence Korb, the Assistant Secretary for Defense under Reagan. A copy of his report is available at http://democrats.union.rpi.edu/korb.pdf. We could save this much money by doing things like:
• Reducing the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000—still more than enough to act as a deterrent.
• Reducing the failed Ballistic Missile Defense system—the so-called “Star Wars” program—to just a research project to figure out if it could ever actually work
• Cut development of several vehicles: the F/A-22 Raptor, designed to counter Soviet jets; SSN-774 Virginia class submarines, which were aimed at Soviet subs; the DD(X) class ship, which the Navy already has a better alternative to; the V-22 Osprey, which even Dick Cheney tried to cancel in 1991; the C-130J transport plane, which has almost 200 design defects that could cause death or injury to its occupants.
• Cut offensive space-based weapons, which are far more expensive than ground and air weapons and do not actually add any offensive capability to the military.
Where would this money go instead under the bill? How about:
• $10 billion to modernize our schools
• $10 billion to provide children health care
• $5 billion for new job training
• $10 billion to improve energy efficiency and renewable energy
• $13 billion to reduce global poverty, illness, illiteracy, disease, disaster, and more
• $5 billion to improve homeland security measures
• $5 billion to reduce our massive deficit
• $2 billion for medical research
All that, and the military still has plenty of money to defend America. And remember, Iraq and Afghanistan are not even being paid for with the Defense Department’s money, so they would be unaffected by these changes. So, to summarize, we cut wasted defense money, invest it in our needs, and keep a strong military. Now that is common sense.
