The House Armed Services Committee today approved a record $690 billion military spending budget for fiscal year 2012. The bill includes a $553 billion base budget, as well as $119 in emergency spending on wars. Other spending on nuclear weapons were also included.
The vote does not actually pass the budget into law but does move it forward. Though it is somewhat larger than the $668.6 billion budget in 2011, officials are spinning it as a cut from the $709 billion hypothetical budget once requested by President Obama, but never actually passed.
Despite the nation’s current financial struggles, the vote for the massive outlay of war spending was not close, with the bill passing the committee 60-1. The only panel member who voted against the bill was Rep. John Garamendi (D – CA), who complained that it extends the war in Afghanistan as well as delaying the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Rep. Garamendi was one of eight members of Congress who sent a letter to President Obama earlier this week urging him to end the Afghan War.
$690,000,000,000.00 (I think that's enough zeroes), for DoD? Are these freaks serious? Okay children, you'll be receiving the tab for this mess.
What are the opportunity costs associated with this 690 billion dollar military budget? Between the military industrial complex and the banksters the time is rapidly approaching when Americans will join the North Koreans in eating pine cones.
Here's my military budget: 0.00
When there's no current invasion inside our borders, there's no reason to have an army. State militias made up of police officers and volunteers can be part of a rapid response system. This is my solution to the budget problem, like the suggestion of offloading medicare to the states. Offload military preparedness to the states.
The problem with the current "peace movement" is that they tend to accept the idea of standing armies and buy into this absurd concept of "support the troops."
The only way we can stop these wars is to disrespect the idea of military in general. We don't need it. We don't want it, and our goals should be absolutely no standing military whatsoever.
Militarism in the US has nothing to do with defense and everything to do with offense. How else would you maintain a colonizing empire without a robust military?
Americans are addicted to militarism. It's like when drug addicts have to go cold turkey to get off an addiction. Maybe if we shoot for completely ridding ourselves of this scourge called the United States Military we'll get something acceptable like an 80% reduction. "Bring the heroes home" is not the correct way of looking at it. "Stop stealing money to pay for hired killers" is more honest.
Bankers love dictators. Bankers love wars. History is absolutely clear on this. The current state goes back to the Stalinist model. Bankers put the communists in power for a very simple reason: control of finance. It is so much easier to control (ie by loans) a dictator and his tiny clique of sycophants than an unruly impudent "mob" of democratically minded republicans (small caps for obvious reasons!)
Military Keynesianism. We let the bankers export all our manufacturing jobs to slave states overseas for falsified "liberal" ie neoliberal reasons. Actually nothing behind it but sheer malevolent greed and psychopathic disregard for the health of the nation. Ideological insanity has been employed to cut our throats for the profit of a few big gangsters. Beyond the military there is nothing left. There are no jobs. So of course the ideological response is "to hell with the workers; let them starve or become slaves". To then turn around and pretend to be concerned about the "expense" of the military state is absurd.
690 billion dollars. That's a lot of money to protect us from those Canadians and Mexicans.
Yeeeeeah! More money borrowed from China to feed the war machine. Yippie!
That is another reason we call the US/NATO a militarism regime and been questioning the fact.., where is that democracy that they are talking about.., while they are looking for answer one need to remind them that the word democracy in social practical terms doesn’t exist.., is been a sham to fool the people.., democracy in US and EU only practiced when the senators debating in parliament or senate floor.., but when is time for practical matter connecting the meaning of the word democracy to the social issues is a falsified notion.., like Obama healthcare plan. People who didn’t have anything to start with now they have to pay to be insured for what they couldn’t afford.., its been few weeks and months when Obama talked about federal government giving all that incentives to Oil companies and he will ask Justice department to look into the high price of gas.., what happened.., is justice department being involved or it was just another political momentum about something that is out there and government knows and pays for it. Liberals who voted for Obama thinking that he was a socialist were fooled and were used thinking that he is going to close the Guantanamo and bring to justice those who falsified the Iraq war.., they still think that he is going to finish Afghanistan war and bring the US militarism regime home from every corner of this world. There are over 90.000 homeless people in los Angeles County (over 60 thousands are accounted for) alone and a lack of education budget.., now you insider.., tell me where is that democracy… closing school and firing teachers or giving all that money to US militarism regime is about democracy….?