Our new "defense" budget astounds. Astounds.
The ideological America is divorced from reality. The budget "freeze" cannot concern itself with defense, even, so enamored of "defense" our politics has become.
Still, $708.2 billion, the sum requested just for fiscal year 2011, is an extraordinary chunk of change. The Center for a New American Security (hardly a dovish think tank) calculates that, adjusting for inflation, this sum is 13 percent higher than the defense budget at the peak of the Korean War, 33 percent higher than at the peak of the Vietnam War, 23 percent higher than at the peak of the Cold War, and 64 percent higher than the Cold War's average.
-Slate
$20 billion for military healthcare (tri-care program) at the beginning of Bush-Cheney is now near $60 billion. There hasn't been a premium increase in this program since 1995. Who has power on the Hill, eh?
Bush-Cheney didn't want to call for sacrifices (a draft, a tax hike) in the wars or continuations that they viewed as imperative, but instead we've expanded the size of the standing army. Brilliant.
Read the whole article in Slate, if you want to laugh at those who think the structural budget problems aren't related to the militarization of our politics.
