EDITORIAL
Bottom line: Defense gets a billion a day
In an analysis following President
Bush’s State of the Union speech Jan. 28, one of the TV talking heads
suggested that Bush had given two speeches, a kind of perfunctory, please
everyone domestic issues speech and another, more passionate,
all-but-a-declaration-of-war speech.
On paper, the two sides of the speech easily separate, but in the
real world they are inextricably bound by considerations of money and national
purpose.
If his speech is any gauge, then in terms of resources, passion
and presidential eloquence, very nearly all of our national purpose is being
poured into the container of war against Iraq.
By the time any war is over, increasingly large chunks of the
national treasury will be drained into the same container.
Whatever words are used to persuade Americans on issues of tax
cuts, health care, hydrogen powered cars, faith-based initiatives or homeland
security, they must be measured against the Bush ambition of spending more than
$396 billion for the military in the current fiscal year. That’s more than
a billion dollars a day. It’s more than six times the spending rate of
Russia, the next largest defense spender, according to the Center for Defense
Information. By such measures, the United States, more than anything else, is
prepared to make war.
Those figures, it must be noted, represent what will be fed into
military coffers before what appears a likely war in Iraq.
On the chance that there is no war and attention again returns to
home, we will be confronted more starkly than during wartime with that question
of national purpose.
In addition to the enormous drain on resources that will go to the
Pentagon, Bush is advocating a $700 billion tax cut. Most Washington observers
see the tax cut as a nonstarter, since Democrats have already targeted it as an
example that the administration has eyes only for the rich, and even some
highly placed congressional Republicans have been openly skeptical.
Further, budget builders in Washington once again have to figure
on a deficit (it’s baaaack) and paying interest on the national debt that
a deficit feeds.
Who’s had time to catch a breath much less get a fix on how
we went from $127 billion in surpluses in 2001 to an estimated $199 billion
shortfall this fiscal year, according to latest estimates from the
Congressional Budget Office.
While much of the first part of Bush’s speech sounded like an
unconvincing laundry list of wishes and quick takes on complicated matters, the
section on providing an additional $10 billion over the next five years to
fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean came across as a heartfelt,
compassionate initiative. And one long overdue.
The rest of the list raised more questions than it provided
answers. Implicit in the quick hits on prescription drugs, additional access to
health care, environmental initiatives regarding forests and even the small
amount of funding for research on hydrogen-powered cars was this
president’s deeply held belief that most problems are better handled by
the private sector and that the greatest good that government can achieve is
promoting entrepreneurial interests.
It has been correctly observed elsewhere that the current
administration represents a roaring return of the Reagan revolution that caused
such memorable jolts throughout the banking and financial communities during
the 1980s.
What is even more disturbing is that the domestic agenda now comes
at us as so many inducements thrown into a crowd. It would have been more
reassuring, perhaps, or at least understandable, if the president had
articulated a vision of government out of which his plan emerges. What is its
purpose beyond going the limit to maintain wealthy interests and increasingly
abdicating federal authority and responsibility to private interests?
If this administration, in some of its particulars, is reminiscent
of the Reagan era, it also is notable for a deficiency that was apparent in yet
another earlier administration. If the most recent assessment of the state of
the union is any indication, the younger Bush, too, lacks “the vision
thing.”
National Catholic Reporter, February 7,
2003
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