Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.), Pres., Center for Defense Information
HOST:
Admiral John Shanahan (USN, Ret.), Director, Center for Defense Information
DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH:
David T. Johnson
DIRECTOR of TELEVISION:
Mark Sugg
PRODUCERS:
Glenn Baker
Jennifer Hazen
Stephen Sapienza
PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER:
Mark Sugg
SEGMENT PRODUCER:
Mark Sugg
NARRATOR:
Kathryn R. Schultz
VIDEO GRAPHICS:
Adam Luther
ORIGINATION:
Washington, D.C.
PROGRAM NO.:
1036
INITIAL BROADCAST:
18 May 1997
CONDITION OF USE:
Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" (Center for Defense Information).
C) Copyright 1997, Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.
Videotapes also available.
"The Military Budget and You" was co-produced with Dr. Harris
Peck, Center for Psychological Issues in the Nuclear Age.
LOIS BRONZE
Legislator, Westchester County, N.Y.
Rep. RON DELLUMS
(D-CA), House National Security Committee
GERTRUDE GOLDBERG
Chairwoman, National Jobs for All
CELINDA LAKE
Pollster, Lake, Sosin, Snell & Associates
SEYMOUR MELMAN
Professor Emeritus, Industrial Engineering, Columbia University
ADM JOHN SHANAHAN
(USN, Ret.) Director, Center for Defense Information
LARRY WOODS
Community Activist
Senator RON WYDEN
(D-OR)
HOUSING ACTIVIST:
"If you don't have a place to live, how are you going to get a job?"
ROBIN:
"We're going to have housing crises, plural, food crises, plural. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to something approximating riots in the near future."
LOIS BRONZE:
"We find money for the things for which we want to find money."
CELINDA LAKE:
"Every solicitation for, you know, 'Save the Children' ought to include a P.S. that says, 'And if you want to know where the real money is, it's only going to be found in the military budget."
["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]
NARRATOR: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Eisenhower's words, spoken in 1953, only a few years into the Cold War, were quickly reduced to the well-known cliche: "Guns or butter?" At the time, the topic of another of Ike's most famous speeches, the "unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex," was a fairly new phenomenon.
Prior to World War II, America did not employ commercial manufacturers to make weapons. Butter, itself a fairly rare phenomenon on kitchen tables in 1953, came to symbolize a government that aspired to meet the domestic needs of its citizens. National security versus domestic needs. Guns or butter?
Looking back, it is clear that, in fact, America tried to buy both guns and butter.
Dr. SEYMOUR MELMAN: There's a myth that has prevailed in American life for a long time, and that myth is that the country is so wealthy -- that is, the material wealth and the ability to produce new wealth is so great that a choice doesn't have to be made as between guns and butter.
NARRATOR: Dr. Seymour Melman of Columbia University is a leading scholar on US industrial policy.
Dr. MELMAN: What has happened during the half-century of the Cold War is that the World War II kind of priority to the military was sustained and a lesser priority was also sustained for the facilities and the services of infrastructure.
NARRATOR: American taxpayers paid $13.4 trillion to fight the Cold War. For most, an unthinkable number. Annual spending on the military averaged $304 billion per year between 1948 and 1995. For comparison, the entire 45,000-mile interstate highway system cost $150 billion over its 40-year development.
During the Cold War period, the federal government also spent vast sums of money to meet a host of domestic challenges: ...The G.I. Bill educated a generation of veterans.
...The government invested in medical and scientific research.
...President Johnson started the War on Poverty through
extensive federal subsidies for housing, nutrition and
job training.
...President Nixon created Medicare for the elderly.
The children of those millions educated by the G.I. Bill took advantage of federally subsidized student loans and scholarships. As a result, America's middle class grew and prospered.
Whatever the merits of guns or butter, America's vast and prosperous middle class was content to believe they could have both.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, according to some, our willingness to spend generously for both guns and butter had won the Cold War and established American-style democracy as the model for the "New World Order." Unfortunately, it has also created economic challenges here at home.
Dr. MELMAN: Starting in 1950, with the publication of the National Security Council's memorandum on strategy for running the Cold War, the country was officially designated as being able to enjoy guns and butter. Hence, that the wealth-producing capability was sufficiently great to have more of both. The history of the last half-century contradicts that.
We have, in fact, had a lot less of butter, whereby butter is meant modern industrial plants, whereby butter is meant modern transportation, whereby butter is meant modern schooling, whereby butter is meant modern and available health care. So, the reality is that the man-hours and the material things used up in the guns have taken away from the butter in the United States. This comes to a head as the Congress twists and turns and squirms around what they call "balancing the budget."
NARRATOR: Years after our principal Cold War adversary entered the history books, taxpayers continue to foot the bill for a Cold War-level military. The Pentagon, while experiencing modest reductions in funding from the peak budgets of the Reagan era, has maintained annual budgets of at least $265 billion throughout the post-Cold War period.
ADM JOHN SHANAHAN: We're only about 10 percent below what we were spending at the height of the Cold War, and at that time we thought we had a major threat out there.
NARRATOR: Vice Admiral John Shanahan served in the US Navy throughout the Cold War era. He is currently director of the Center for Defense Information.
ADM SHANAHAN: GEN Hughes, who is the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in testifying before Congress just this past February described the national security threat to the United States, and I would like to quote that threat: "From a national security standpoint, the threats facing the United States have diminished in order of magnitude and we are unlikely to face a global military challenge on the scale of the former Soviet Union for at least the next two decades." That's the end of the quote.
But I personally would like to emphasize, at least the next two decades; that's a minimum of 20 years. We have a fantastic window of opportunity rethink -- the Pentagon has this opportunity to rethink where we're going.
NARRATOR: The enormous wealth of the US economy, coupled with the government's tolerance for deficit spending, has enabled politicians and voters to postpone the day of financial reckoning. Today, however, the tables have turned.
America's crowning achievement, its ever-increasing middle class, has become an enormous -- and vocal -- "anxious class." Anxious about falling wages. Anxious about access to education and health care. Anxious about falling behind in the global competition for jobs sprung by the end of the Cold War.
CITIZEN: Where are our children and, more importantly, our grandchildren going to be 50 to 60 years from now? What are we going to do from an educational base today or a job market base today to make the quality of life for our future generations to be as good as ours have been?
CITIZEN: Health care is going to be a major concern with not being able to have affordable health care.
CITIZEN and MOTHER: To be competitive, I feel that they have to go to college, so that's number one. And we want them to be able to go to the school that they -- the best that they can get into and not have to worry about can we afford it.
NARRATOR: For the first time since the end of World War II, a majority of Americans believe that their children will inherit of a lower standard of living than their parents. A majority of Americans have agreed that the practice of deficit spending must come to an end.
Rep. RON DELLUMS: The administration has agreed we will balance the budget by the year 2002. The Congress has agreed that we're going to balance the budget. That debate's over, folks.
NARRATOR: Congressman Ron Dellums is the ranking minority member of the House National Security Committee.
Rep. DELLUMS: The issue now is how are you going to balance the budget, upon whose back? Who is going to carry the burden of balancing that budget?
Now if people agree with me that a healthy society, an informed and enlightened society and a vibrant economy is an integral part of national security, I'm saying to you that if you spend inordinate, unnecessary, excessive dollars buying unneeded, dangerous, redundant weapons systems, carrying a force structure that's too large, having the level of your readiness way beyond anything that's necessary, having your goals unrealistic out there, like fighting two major regional wars without any help in the world and going it all alone -- If we make those kind of assumptions and spend the billions of dollars required to do that, folks, if you're going to balance the budget, from where is that money going to come?
NARRATOR: For better or worse, for the first time since before the Great Depression, the Congress and president agreed to "balance" the federal budget without raising additional revenue through taxes. Today, the overall federal budget pie is shrinking.
The share of public funds devoted to military spending is now in direct competition with all other non-military federal programs. In other words, the 45-year tradition of guns and butter has truly become a choice between guns or butter, in the original sense of Eisenhower's turn of phrase.
Sen. RON WYDEN: If you look at the presidential debate that was held last year, when you talk about the Fall of 1996, virtually the entire discussion of military spending was put off-limits. There was sort of the overall sentiment that spending might have gone down a little bit, the Cold War was over, but no real tough judgments about priority.
CITIZEN: Education is taking a back seat.
CITIZEN: I believe that the family should come first.
CITIZEN: I want to know that I can work my 30 years and have my retirement waiting.
CITIZEN: And I think we should pursue some type of health care for the American people.
CITIZEN: I think also the deficit...
NARRATOR: Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, reflects the growing view that all federal programs must be carefully weighed.
Sen. WYDEN: I just think you've got to apply the same tough principles of accountability to the Pentagon that you apply to any other. Let's go line by line because, just as I do with health care, or agriculture, or transportation, the issue is not just the overall amount, but are there still places where you can make economies in a way that protects the public interest? And I look, for example, at the B-2 bomber program, at the fact we're looking at plans for $400 billion-plus in fighter aircraft into the next century, and I say these are the places where you can make sensible economies that will be good for our country.
NARRATOR: This graph represents the sum total of discretionary spending identified in the 1997 federal budget. By "discretionary," budget-makers mean federal spending based on the choices made by our elected representatives. Everything else in the budget -- interest and federal entitlements, such as Medicare and Social Security -- are off-limits unless changed by law.
Consider the following statistics about the US military:
The United States spends over a third of the total amount spent by the rest of the world combined on the military. Looking at the handful of countries identified by the military as potential threats -- North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria -- the United States enjoys a 16-to-1 advantage in military spending.
The United States and its friends and allies account for 77 percent of global military spending. And, unless the Congress legislates otherwise, military spending for the next five years will go up significantly.
ADM SHANAHAN: Too much money for the wrong kinds of systems to deal with the kinds of threats that we foresee in the future. I find very little comfort in building F-22 fighters at a program cost of $70 billion. I find very little comfort in building a thousand F/A-18E/Fs for another $80 billion. And now we're looking at the Joint Strike Fighter at about $300 billion down the line. These are the kinds of weapons systems that have very little to do with the kinds of threats that we're going to be facing.
NARRATOR: At a time when many middle-class Americans feel more threatened by college tuitions or the price of home ownership, over half of the 1977 federal discretionary budget remains devoted to military spending.
Although America now has fewer enemies and more friends around the world, in 1997 Congress added billions of dollars more to the military budget than the Pentagon asked for.
Sen. WYDEN: I think it's very clear that our country wants a strong national defense, but we don't want to waste money. And, for example, in the last session of Congress the Congress, over my objection, gave the Pentagon something like $10 billion more than they asked for. Now a lot of that was simply porkbarrel spending in individual members' districts.
And if you had, for example, that $10 billion to do over again, you could have put perhaps $5- or $6 billion into deficit reduction, which helps all our country in terms of putting the books in order, and you could have had perhaps $4 billion for some targeted investments in education, and transportation, and the needs of our citizens.
NARRATOR: Few facts are more indicative of the choices facing Americans today than a comparison of congressional cuts in social programs alongside the more than $10 billion in congressional add-ons for the military. The federal pie may be shrinking, but the military slice is growing larger.
[Graph displaying $9.21 billion in budget cuts.]
Rep. DELLUMS: With the most powerful military on the face of the earth and your society is falling apart, what are you defending? What is your national security strategy? So, this gives us an opportunity.
NARRATOR: In the old days of guns and butter, congressional sponsors of military and non-military federal spending seldom felt the need to attack specific programs in order to find resources to protect their own. Rather, they used the political process to promote the programs that most benefited their voters back home. Today, in the shrinking pie era of guns or butter, some federal activities will be losers.
In the budget battle, so far, military programs, with their strong backers in Congress and industry, are clearly winning out over federal investments in education, housing, and job creation. Three major weapons systems symbolize the influence and staying power of Cold War weapons.
Currently under fierce debate is the F-22 fighter plane. Designed for use against the Soviet Union during the 1970s, the F-22 program will cost taxpayers $72 billion.
For $13 billion, taxpayers are buying three Seawolf submarines, again developed to counter Soviet ballistic missile submarines that no longer exist. They are being built anyway in order to preserve the technology base against the day a new submarine threat arises, a danger that is not foreseen for many decades.
The B-2 "Stealth" bomber is the most costly weapon ever built at roughly $2 billion per plane. Originally designed to evade air defense radar during a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union, taxpayers will provide almost $45 billion for 21 airplanes.
Sen. WYDEN: I wish I could say that business-as-usual was over with respect to military spending. Unfortunately, when you look at programs like the B-2 bomber, you see what's happened is almost strategically little pieces of bacon have been stationed all over the country. Then people say jobs, jobs, jobs, and they continue to vote for the programs. I've been hopeful that in this area where you do face a fiscal vice, you should make some tough calls, but unfortunately not enough have been made.
NARRATOR: It is not so clear, however, whether the majority of tax-paying Americans agree with defense contractors that continued Cold War levels of spending on the military are the wisest investment of government funds.
According to Professor Melman, federal investment in a variety of non-military programs would meet public needs and enhance the economy.
Dr. MELMAN: We're now going to talk about decent housing for every family that needs; the price tag is about $564 billion. Electrifying the railroads modern-style: the price tag is $180 billion. Fix-up and patch-up of school buildings from coast to coast -- not brand new, you understand, just fix-up and patch-up: $112 billion.
Modernizing the railroads will generate 500,000 jobs continuously, because new equipment is always needed, maintenance is always needed. Doing the fix-up of the schools across the country -- just repair, not new ones -- will surely take another million persons. Doing the housing that I mentioned earlier would require at least one-and-a-half million people. Rent has become an increasing proportion of earnings of ordinary people. The rents have moved up and the earnings have stayed low, and they've even decreased. We're suddenly talking about several millions' jobs.
Although several million jobs aren't all jobs that take education, that take training, they are, in the best sense, skilled jobs and, therefore, in ordinary understanding, well-paying jobs, as they should be. The United States today is dramatically short of well-paying jobs.
NARRATOR: Celinda Lake is a leading pollster in Washington, D.C.
CELINDA LAKE: Right now all the experts say the economy is at an all-time high, we're in great shape, etc., etc. And what's really interesting, when you talk to the middle class is how marginal they continue to feel. And they acknowledge, they'll say, 'Well, they say it's so good,' or , you know, 'The national economy's supposed to be good,' or 'The statistics are good,' or 'It's good for the people in the stock market.' But there's a sense of deep underlying anxiety that it may not last, that we may not be able to guarantee it for our children.
That the way people have made their families be able to make ends meet is by putting more people to work for more hours at some tremendous cost to family life and community life. What will retirement be like? What happens if you have a health care crisis? You could be one paycheck away from disaster. So, there's a real precariousness to the feelings of it being good times that is really quite at odds with how the experts see the economy.
FOOD PANTRY WORKER: I came into the food pantry from a corporate background. I'd worked in Wall Street for ten years. The company folded. I was 40-plus and over-qualified for practically any little job I tried, and I tried for about a year-and-a-half. I finally had to go on welfare and found that insufficient. So, I ended up down here one day, looking for food, and mentioned to the boss that I would like to have a job if she knew of any available.
CITIZEN at Food Pantry: Where's a good job? I'm not a fully educated, I don't have a high school diploma yet, but I'm working on it. How's I'm going to watch an 11-month-old baby and go to school and work?
GERTRUDE GOLDBERG: For a nation to have large amounts of its people deprived of anything close to the good life is really a national tragedy.
NARRATOR: Gertrude Goldberg is the chairwoman of National Jobs For All, a coalition of public interest organizations that advocate job creation.
Ms. GOLDBERG: With all that we believe in the work ethic, we've had a partial entitlement to welfare for 60 years, and we still do for the elderly and disabled. But we've never had an entitlement to work. We've never really said everybody who wants to work, who wants to do something for his or her society can do it. And, gosh knows, we have loads of unmet need.
We need child care, we need housing, we need to improve our infrastructure. All of that makes us a more productive society. Those of us who are actively promoting jobs for all at decent wages, we like to say that there isn't a single major social problem that wouldn't be easier to solve if we had jobs for all at decent wages.
NARRATOR: As the impact of cuts in federal programs is felt around the country, Americans are sending a strong message to Congress about the federal programs they think are a national priority. Foremost among these are programs that promote education and jobs.
GRADUATE STUDENT: It's hard. There's different types of aid that you can get, although they're generally decreasing grants and increasing loans now, so you end up having to pay back for however many of tens of years after you graduate.
COLLEGE STUDENT: It's very frightening because they don't really offer the real aid that I need. They're offering a lot of loans. I'm going to be in debt up my patootie when I graduate, plus grad school, which is -- it's like necessary for anything. Your Bachelor's degree doesn't guarantee you anything.
NARRATOR: In the late seventies, loans represented 36 percent of financial aid opportunities. Grants and student aid jobs, the other 64 percent. Today, the situation is reversed, limiting young people's access to critical skills and training.
CITIZEN: The money is there, we just don' know where they're holding it. I mean, the Pentagon actually got more money than they requested from the federal government last year. Why is that? Why is that, you know, you ask for a certain amount of money and they're going to give you more money, but then they're going to tell us that there's not enough money out there for other programs that actually, in the long run, help people and actually is a real investment in people that saves us money.
NARRATOR: In 1977, lower-income Americans struggling to join the middle class spent over half of their income on housing. In 30 percent of all households, over 27 million, one out of five owners and two out of five renters pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing.
LOIS BRONZE: We have less investment in affordable housing and we have a tremendous need for affordable housing in the county. Five thousand units would put us near a basic -- filling basic need, and we're not anywhere near that.
Ms. LAKE: For every person who says we need more money in our schools, we need more money for Head Start, we need more money for mental health, or whatever it is, we have to connect it back because there is no money other than raise taxes and the military. That's really about all there is in the budget. And those two arguments have not been joined. It seems to me the day of reckoning is coming if we really are going to balance the budget the way we're headed.
LARRY WOODS: People have to be out in the streets. People have to be in offices with their legislators. People have to talk about this in their own homes and their own communities.
NARRATOR: Today, the US has the need and the opportunity to reverse the decline in public investment which took place in the 1980s when Cold War military budgets consumed an ever-larger slice of the investment pie. With the government planning to increase military spending again, it will be up to American citizens to make their priorities known.
Rep. DELLUMS: My colleagues are finely tuned to public opinion. This is an opportunity for the public to step forward on their own behalf and to say the Cold War is over, it is time for us to rethink. We don't want you to cripple our foreign programs, and our education programs, and our housing programs, and our environmental programs, and our veteran programs and whatever in order for you to build up a military force that we don't need, so let's sit down and begin to talk about it. And then my colleagues will be forced to become educated on these issues.
They'll be forced to grapple with the questions. So, engage them, challenge them: How do you choose to balance the budget? Why do you think we need to spend so much money on the military budget? In balancing the budget, what are your priorities? Do you think that this is the time for a new national security strategy? Why do we need to build Cold War weapons systems when the Cold War is over?
NARRATOR: Guns or butter? Unneeded weapons or public investments in a strong and healthy society? The choice is yours.
[End of broadcast.]
CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"
(Center for Defense Information).
(C) Copyright 1997. Center for Defense Information. All Rights
Reserved.