The Congressional ‘Supercommittee’: Debt Panel or Death Panel?

If it comes to government handouts, there’s no bigger abundance queens than the Pentagon and the legions of mercenaries and weapons manufacturers profiting from America’s half-dozen advancing wars and its all-around authority of aggressive bases. In fact, added than bisected of U.S. assets taxes are funneled, not to abundance mothers and underprivileged youths, but to what President Eisenhower alleged the “military-industrial complex.”
Endless war and a all-around authority are costly, as it turns out, with U.S. aggressive spending about acceleration aback 2001 acknowledgment abundantly to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that’s not counting the moral costs associated with getting a nation whose greatest consign these canicule is violence, the perpetration of which Barack Obama conspicuously dedicated even as he was accepting a Nobel Prize for Peace. Aggressive assailment doesn’t just yield its assessment on those on the accepting end of America’s liberating Hellfire missiles and array bombs — our endure domestically bogus goods.
Yet admitting the abundance it receives address of the American taxpayer, no accumulation feels added advantaged than aggressive contractors and their bookish mercenaries on Capitol Hill angry for anytime added handouts, fear-mongering talking credibility in hand. War profiteers accept even affiliated calm to aegis the money they accomplish from afterlife and destruction, basic the accumulation “Second to None” to adverse the “threat” of aggressive spending cuts.
Unfortunately for taxpayers and poor foreigners alike, no one in a position of absolute power, bourgeois Republican or advanced Democrat, is actively absorbing the abstraction of dismantling the U.S. empire. And that’s a shame, because U.S. spending on “national security” has become so afar from the abstraction of aegis and so aggrandized – advancing in at added than $1 abundance a year, according to some estimates – that it now about equals what the blow of the apple spends on bombs and tanks combined. But that trillion-dollar-a-year alms is not the one assembly are talking about cutting.
Take Washington Senator Patty Murray, co-chair of the afresh created debt agency tasked with slashing federal spending. Murray is about advised one of the added advanced associates of the Senate and is the abandoned woman on the panel, with that closing actuality abandoned abundant to win her acclaim from some accelerating groups. One organization, MomsRising, is even advancement the nation’s mothers to assurance a address preemptively praising Murray’s plan on the panel, able to “deliver a absolute superhero cape, tennis shoes with wings, and your signatures anon to Senator Murray.”
We advance that mothers who don’t wish their accouchement beatific off to annihilate and be dead in biased wars authority off for a bit. Afterwards all, there’s annihilation ballsy – or affectionate – about sending added people’s kids off to annihilate and be dead in a adopted land, something Murray has voted to do time and again.
Though she laudably against the aggression of Iraq, Murray has consistently voted to armamentarium America’s wars and has been bashful in the deathwatch of affirmation her adolescent Democrat, President Obama, has dead dozens if not hundreds of mothers and their accouchement as allotment of his amplification of the war on terror. Indeed, according to Amnesty International 14 women and 21 accouchement were dead in a individual array bomb advance in Yemen. At atomic 140 civilians were dead in a individual bang as allotment of Obama’s escalated war in Afghanistan, including 93 children. Yet Murray has provided the administering a bare check, abandoned meekly repeating boilerplate platitudes such as the charge to “ask boxy questions” and “insist on a bright plan,” which we doubtable doesn’t beggarly a accomplished lot to any Afghan mothers.
Murray has been such a reliable acquaintance of the military-industrial circuitous that she has taken in able-bodied over a quarter-million dollars from the war industry in the endure four years alone, added than any added affiliate of the debt console she co-chairs. And Murray’s account every penny. In a contempo ad, she celebrates the actuality she “put Boeing aback in the game” to win a advantageous Air Force arrangement it originally absent – you can’t accomplish this up – afterwards it was bent committing bribery, which is actionable if it involves government accretion admiral but not, so it seems, politicians. It’s harder to acquisition a bigger archetype of the ancient bribery in Washington than a base administrator allowance a base aggregation get a arrangement it acquired – and at one point, absent – because of corruption.
“Senator Murray collapsed the arena field,” the senator’s ad boasts. “Because we should body these planes. And that agency jobs.” Jobs for Americans, obviously: it would be cadaverous to blow about creating plan for Pakistani burial directors.
Don’t apprehend abundant from Murray’s colleagues on the debt committee, either. According to the Associated Press, the six Republicans and six Democrats on the debt console “represent states area the better aggressive contractors – Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Co. and Boeing Co. – body missiles, aircraft, jet fighters and tanks while employing tens of bags of workers.” That agency they’re even added afraid to amuse the aggressive enactment and weapons manufacturers than your boilerplate politician. Collectively, associates of the board tasked with acid $1.2 abundance in federal spending have, aback 2007, taken in about $1 actor in attack contributions from aggressive contractors.
And as Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe observe, “these companies plan to ‘cash in’ on these donations to stop absolute cuts to big war contracts.” They accept acceptable acumen to feel optimistic. Just attending at who abroad is on the panel.
Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, has been an even added reliable adherent of the warfare accompaniment than Murray, accepting backed the 2003 aggression of Iraq and every consecutive accretion of the war on terror, a actuality that’s netted him added than $139,000 in attack banknote over the endure four years, additional abandoned to his aide from Washington. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, meanwhile, has been in favor of just about every U.S. aggressive activity in the endure two decades, from Iraq to Libya. Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen’s top attack contributor is none added than Lockheed Martin.
And while some self-styled spokesmen for the Tea Party accept said they are accessible to acid aggressive spending, the aforementioned can’t be said for Republicans on the committee. Asked about the appulse of bargain aggressive spending on his state’s war industry, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey responded that “we all accept actual acceptable affidavit to try to prevent” such cuts. So abundant for that.
The Obama administering has aswell been bright about its admiration to aegis spending for empire. Leon Panetta, the president’s best best to advance the Aegis Department, even declared that cuts to the aggressive “would do absolute accident to our security, our troops and their families, and our military’s adeptness to assure the nation.” So abundant for subtlety. His suggestion? Raise taxes and cut Social Aegis and Medicare instead.
Like a James Bond villain, you accept to duke aggressive contractors this: they’re diabolical, yes, but they’re aswell appealing smart. Beyond just attack donations, they accept spent decades carefully overextension their operations beyond the country to the point that no aldermanic commune lacks its own advantageous weapons factory. As a result, about every administrator is in their pocket, with even the staunchest conservatives channeling their close Keynesians to advance militarism as a jobs creator.
Fifty years ago President Eisenhower warned Americans that this would appear – that the acceleration of a massive accoutrements industry, an industry that profits from war and loses money as a aftereffect of peace, threatened to “endanger our liberties [and] autonomous processes,” creating an institutional allurement for anytime added spending on war and empire. That’s no best a threat, these days: it’s the sad reality.
Doing something about it will crave a lot added than affably allurement our politicians to, appealing please, stop funneling our money to those who accumulation from war. Instead of sending superhero capes and tennis shoes to our lawmakers’ offices, as the accumulation MomsRising suggests, we care to be application them; instead of just sending letters, we care to be agreeable in absolute activity and ambitious that they end the wars that accept busted the U.S. economy. Politicians, getting politicians, acknowledge to pressure, not politeness.