By Matthew Bisanz
President Bush recently proposed to spend $716 billion on defense for the next year. To put that in proportion, that’s more than 15 times Bill Gates’ net worth, 50 times what NASA spends each year, and could pay for the Hofstra tuition of more than 30 million students for one year. Now that $716 billion includes $143 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so nearly a third of the military’s budget is devoted to fighting wars that we’ve already won.
Saddam is dead and Osama might as well be. In Afghanistan more U.S. military forces will do little to stabilize the country; and in Iraq the number of forces required to stabilize the country would most likely require the entire nation’s freshman college class to be drafted. Therefore, if the President really cared about the American people he would be cutting the defense budget rather than increasing it. I know you’re thinking, “But if we cut the budget, we’ll be less safe from terrorists.” But the fact is that most of the money spent on defense does little to protect America from terrorists.
Paying for the Joint Striker Fighter or a new aircraft carrier cost lots of money, but they are poor weapons to prevent a terrorist from blowing himself up in Grand Central Station. We’ve all heard in the news how Wyoming gets more money per capita for anti-terrorism than New York does, and even then that money is peanuts compared to spending on large weapons of war.
Even more important is the opportunity cost of spending this money on guns rather than butter. Rather than ensuring that Social Security will be there tomorrow with increased funding or filling the large gap in Medicare Part D, this money is being spent on tanks that will most likely rust as soon as the war in Iraq is over and on new military commands whose purpose overlaps with existing commands. Rather than spend money to make certain that no child is left behind in school, something rather cheap considering the entire Department of Education budget was $61 billion last year, that money is spent to provide profits to Halliburton and other country building companies.
The problem is that the American government has a duty first to its citizens and then to the rest of the world. It might be nice to rebuild Iraq, but how will the United States have the money to buy oil from Iraq in the future if its citizens are too illiterate to compete in the global economy? Every year tens of thousands of Americans die because of the flu, yet the entire population could be vaccinated for a mere $7.5 billion, 1/100 the cost of the defense spending. If the defense budget was instead made into a grant for going to college, every college student could afford to go to Harvard free of charge.
President Bush needs to invest in the things that have made America great in the world; namely our incredible knowledge base and unrivaled infrastructure. More funding should go to building hospitals, training doctors and paying for preventative care to increase the working life span of Americans. The National Science Foundation should see its budget of $5.5 billion increased to $55 billion. Basic skills training in schools should not only be a goal but a funded program. Many schools make do with outdated textbooks, overflowing classes and insufficient attention to individual students. Instead of sending 20,000 to 40,000 more troops to Iraq, those troops should be trained as teachers and sent into America’s schools.
America needs a military but in 1982 the entire federal budget was equal to what President Bush proposes to spend on defending the nation in the 2008 fiscal year. Just think of what some of those dollars could buy for the American people.
Matthew Bisanz is a senior political science student. You may e-mail him at [email protected].