Total Military Spending
In “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”, author Chalmers Johnson reveal the scope of the military-industrial-congressional complex’s influence.
Imperialism and militarism are undermining America's Constitutional system. The privatization of military and intelligence functions are totally out of control and beyond Congressional oversight. It’s unbelievably lucrative for the owners of so-called private military companies. So-called, because the money to pay for their activities ultimately comes from taxpayers through government contracts. Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, estimates that there are 126,000 private military contractors in Iraq, more than enough to keep the war going, even if most official U.S. troops were withdrawn. Scahill writes: "From the beginning these contractors have been a major hidden story of the war, almost uncovered in the mainstream media and central to maintaining the U.S. occupation of Iraq."
America's ever increasing "military" budgets are beginning to threaten the America with bankruptcy, given that its trade and fiscal deficits already easily make it the world's largest net debtor nation. Spending on the military establishment has soared to the highest levels since World War II, exceeding the budgets of the Korean and Vietnam War eras as well as President Ronald Reagan's weapons buying binge in the 1980s. According to calculations by the National Priorities Project, a non-profit research organization, military spending today consumes 40% of every tax dollar.
Chalmers Johnson insists that it’s virtually impossible for a member of Congress or an ordinary citizen to obtain even a modest handle on the actual size of military spending or its impact on the functioning of our economic system. Some $30 billion of the official Defense Department appropriation in the current fiscal year is "black," meaning that it is allegedly going for highly classified projects. The unrestricted part of the Defense Department budget receives only superficial scrutiny because members of Congress, seeking lucrative defense contracts for their districts, have mutually beneficial relationships with defense contractors and the Pentagon. President Dwight D. Eisenhower identified this phenomenon, in draft version of his 1961 farewell address, as the "military-industrial-congressional complex." Forty-six years later, in a way even Eisenhower probably couldn't have imagined, the defense budget is beyond serious congressional oversight or control.
The Defense Department tries to minimize the size of its budget by representing it as a declining percentage of the gross national product. However, it never reveals is that total military spending is actually many times larger than the official appropriation for the Defense Department.
Imperialism and militarism are undermining America's Constitutional system. The privatization of military and intelligence functions are totally out of control and beyond Congressional oversight. It’s unbelievably lucrative for the owners of so-called private military companies. So-called, because the money to pay for their activities ultimately comes from taxpayers through government contracts. Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, estimates that there are 126,000 private military contractors in Iraq, more than enough to keep the war going, even if most official U.S. troops were withdrawn. Scahill writes: "From the beginning these contractors have been a major hidden story of the war, almost uncovered in the mainstream media and central to maintaining the U.S. occupation of Iraq."
America's ever increasing "military" budgets are beginning to threaten the America with bankruptcy, given that its trade and fiscal deficits already easily make it the world's largest net debtor nation. Spending on the military establishment has soared to the highest levels since World War II, exceeding the budgets of the Korean and Vietnam War eras as well as President Ronald Reagan's weapons buying binge in the 1980s. According to calculations by the National Priorities Project, a non-profit research organization, military spending today consumes 40% of every tax dollar.
Chalmers Johnson insists that it’s virtually impossible for a member of Congress or an ordinary citizen to obtain even a modest handle on the actual size of military spending or its impact on the functioning of our economic system. Some $30 billion of the official Defense Department appropriation in the current fiscal year is "black," meaning that it is allegedly going for highly classified projects. The unrestricted part of the Defense Department budget receives only superficial scrutiny because members of Congress, seeking lucrative defense contracts for their districts, have mutually beneficial relationships with defense contractors and the Pentagon. President Dwight D. Eisenhower identified this phenomenon, in draft version of his 1961 farewell address, as the "military-industrial-congressional complex." Forty-six years later, in a way even Eisenhower probably couldn't have imagined, the defense budget is beyond serious congressional oversight or control.
The Defense Department tries to minimize the size of its budget by representing it as a declining percentage of the gross national product. However, it never reveals is that total military spending is actually many times larger than the official appropriation for the Defense Department.
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