Rear Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.)
Director, Center for Defense Information
INTERVIEWER & NARRATOR:
Sanford Gottlieb, Senior Producer,
MARKETING & OPERATIONS:
Mark Sugg
PRODUCERS:
Matthew Hansen
Nick Moore
Daniel Sagalyn
PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER:
Daniel Sagalyn
PROGRAM PRODUCER:
Daniel Sagalyn
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER/ MARKETING:
Lori McRea
ORIGINATION:
Washington, D.C.
PROGRAM NO.:
523
INITIAL BROADCAST:
23 February 1992
CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"
(Center for Defense Information).
(C) Copyright 1992, Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.
Videotapes also available.
MARTHA BURT
Director, Social Services Research Program, The Urban Institute
RALPH De GENNARO
Friends of the Earth/Environmental Policy Institute
MIKE MILLS
Congressional Quarterly
EDITH RASELL
Economic Policy Institute
ETHAL WHITE
Washington, D.C. Resident
NARRATOR: It's not just America's roads that need help with the end of the cold war, many Americans are looking forward to a big "peace dividend" to rebuild a major chunk of our country.
["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]
Admiral GENE LaROCQUE: Welcome once again to "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."
Now that the cold war is over, there's a lot of talk in the United States about a peace dividend. Actually, after every major war in this century, there has been a peace dividend. After World War I, World War II, Korea, and even after Vietnam, there has been a peace dividend. And when a peace dividend comes along, you expect the spending to go down dramatically.
Today, our military spending is staying at about the same level as it had been at the height of the cold war. Our program is about that today and I know you're going to find it very interesting.
President DWIGHT EISENHOWER: "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."
NARRATOR: President Eisenhower made these remarks in 1953. He went on to say that the cost of one modern heavy bomber equaled a modern brick school in more than thirty cities.
Times have changed. Today, the cost of a single B-2 bomber, $2 billion apiece, is this: 424 elementary schools for 254,000 children. With the kind of bombers we're buying today, for the same money we could build fourteen times as many schools as was the case in President Eisenhower's day.
Today, the United States is faced with a big trade-off: Whether to continue spending huge amounts of money on unneeded weapons, like the B-2 stealth bomber and C-17 cargo plane, and maintaining several hundred thousand soldiers in foreign countries such as Germany, Japan and Korea, or to channel resources into critical American needs such as education, the environment, housing, transportation networks and other areas -- the underpinnings of national strength. If we continue to spend on the military as we have in the past, America's domestic needs will continue to be squeezed out.
Over the past forty years, the United States spent more money each year on the military than all other Western industrialized countries combined. We spent a staggering $12 trillion fighting the cold war. It was the longest, most expensive war America has ever fought and over 91,000 people were killed during the hot wars of the cold war in places like Korea, Vietnam and Grenada. And while the United States was fighting and preparing for wars, the French, Germans and Japanese were spending their money on things like high-speed trains, schools and health care.
The United States has paid a heavy price in order to fight the cold war. We've neglected to spend sufficiently to build America. This problem of neglect of the home front was worsened during the last decade. During the 1980s, US military spending more than doubled from $134 billion in 1980 to $303 billion in 1990, and the national debt soared to $4 trillion.
Today, President Bush claims that military spending will go down in coming years.
President GEORGE BUSH (28 January '92, State of the Union Message): "The secretary of defense recommended these cuts after consultation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff... The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years."
NARRATOR: This so-called $50 billion cut is only 3 percent of what the Bush administration wants to spend on the military over the next six years. Contrary to the impression that military spending is going down, it is not.
The president's latest plans call for spending $281 billion on the military in 1993, with increases each year so that, by 1997, military spending will be up to $291 billion. That's a total of $1.5 trillion over the next five years. Looked at another way, President Bush still wants to spend about
$6 billion a week on the military.
The military is still planning to buy lots of new and very expensive weapons and continue stationing hundreds of thousands of soldiers around the world. Some members of Congress think military spending should be cut significantly.
Senator EDWARD KENNEDY (D-MA) (before Senate Armed Services Committee): "We need to go deeper, and we can afford to do so. Either the cold war is over or it is not. It is inconsistent for the president to claim we won the cold war and then reduce defense spending only to normal cold war levels when we face other urgent needs.
"What have we gained if we win the cold war and lose the war on crime, the war on drugs, the war on poverty? What have we gained if we succeed against our international adversaries, but fail against the urgent domestic challenges that we face in education and health care? Winning these battles is also vital to the future of America."
NARRATOR: The new weapons the Pentagon wants to buy and forces it wants to keep overseas
were first designed to counter a perceived Soviet military danger. Yet today, the Soviet Union is
extinct. Even the secretary of defense acknowledges this.
Secretary RICHARD CHENEY (Pentagon briefing): "The Warsaw Pact is gone. The hardliners in the Soviet Union failed in their coup attempt in August and, on Christmas Day last year, the Soviet Union ceased to exist."
NARRATOR: The United States now has a big opportunity to cancel more unneeded weapons, bring home more soldiers and channel significant resources elsewhere. The backlog of unmet domestic problems is staggering: Crime and drugs. Inadequate and expensive health care for millions of Americans. Nine million men and women out of work.
However, the United States has the resources to tackle these problems, but we have to make choices about where the resources should come from. We can raise taxes or increase the national debt by borrowing, or we can take advantage of the end of the cold war and significantly reduce military spending.
For example, for the cost of one new F-117 stealth fighter, about $140 million, roughly 4200 policemen could be hired instead to patrol our nation's cities. New F-117s are not needed and the Pentagon doesn't want them. Nevertheless, Congress has authorized money for them. Members of Congress direct the Pentagon periodically to buy things it doesn't want in order to keep production lines in their districts open.
For the cost of buying new equipment for the National Guard and reserves, $1.4 billion, drug abuse treatment could be provided to thousands of people who seek help. $1.4 billion is what the Congress tried to force the Pentagon to spend on new, unneeded equipment for the Guard and reserves.
For the cost of researching and developing the Air Force's new F-22 fighter for one year, $2.2 billion, we could expand job training programs that give workers new skills. The
F-22 fighter was designed to fight some future Soviet aircraft, which obviously is not going to be made now that the Soviet Union no longer exists.
According to one comprehensive report, America's Third Deficit, produced by the Center for Community Change, at least $134 billion a year is needed in order to correct a decade of past neglect.
Of course, by itself, money cannot solve all of America's troubles. But without money, there is little hope of making the country stronger and more productive.
Let's look at some of America's neglected problems. Perhaps no need is more pressing than education. American kids have fallen behind their foreign counterparts. Test scores show Japanese and European kids outscoring young Americans in math and science. This threatens our ability to raise living standards and compete in the global market.
Dr. Edith Rasell is an economist at the influential Economic Policy Institute. She's conducted a thorough study that compares spending by industrialized countries on kindergarten through twelfth grade. Unfortunately, she found that the United States ranks near the bottom.
EDITH RASELL: None of our kids are doing as well as they could be doing and there's a number of reasons for that. We need to do a lot of different school reform efforts and we also
probably need to spend more money. We spend less than most other developed nations do on education, primary and secondary education, and I think we see the results of that.
We looked at sixteen industrialized countries, the ones that you would obviously think of: Most of Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia. And of the sixteen, only two spent less that we did, Australia and Ireland, and the rest spent more than we did.
NARRATOR: While most money for public education comes from state and local taxes, in many poorer communities, the federal contribution is significant. Today, American schools need a serious boost.
Dr. RASELL: Just the physical structure of a lot of our buildings is terrible, especially in urban areas. The schools are literally falling down, they're in terrible repair. Kids don't have the supplies or the books that they need. The teachers can't get the materials that they need. We can't expect learning to go on in those kinds of situations.
NARRATOR: Everyone knows that many American schools are rundown and overcrowded. For the cost of one new F-14D fighter plane, about $121 million, we could hire almost 3600 public school teachers for one year to work in America's inner city schools.
A number of students we spoke to confirmed the decrepit condition of their classrooms.
INTERVIEWER: What kind of stuff do you think you need in your schools?
GIRL STUDENT: A better classroom, I would say.
INTERVIEWER: A better classroom? Anything else?
GIRL STUDENT: Too much mice come in it.
INTERVIEWER: You get too many what?
GIRL STUDENT: Mice.
INTERVIEWER: There are mice in your classroom?
GIRL STUDENT: Yes. And you have to set traps up in the classroom.
INTERVIEWER: They set mouse traps in your classroom?
GIRL STUDENT: Yes. I think last week, we caught three mice.
NARRATOR: Illiteracy among adults is also a pressing problem. For what we spend on operating one Army division for a year, about $2 billion, the United States could greatly expand adult literacy programs.
President Bush says he wants to increase funding for Head Start by $600 million for 1993. Head Start is the enormously successful federally funded program which provides education, health and other social services to pre-schoolers from low income families.
However, coming after the budget shortfalls during the 1980s, Edith Rasell thinks it's not enough and that more federal funding of kindergarten through twelfth grade is necessary.
Dr. RASELL: More money alone is not the answer. Anybody can waste money, and we certainly can in education and, undoubtedly, we do. But, on the other hand, I don't think that we can do the things that we want to do, have the improvements that we want to see without spending more money.
NARRATOR: How much more money is needed? It's hard to say. But an estimated $10 billion more each year is needed for kindergarten through twelfth grade education just to bring American schools up to international standards.
Ten billion dollars is about what the American troops and equipment in Japan cost every year. That's right, about $10 billion. Japan, a country with more than enough money to be able to protect itself and a major economic competitor of the United States. It's clear that maintaining 45,000 soldiers with their equipment in Japan is no longer necessary.
About $6 billion is needed so that all eligible children ages three to five could participate in Head Start. That's less than the cost of the new Aegis destroyers the Pentagon would like to buy. Despite the fragmentation of the Soviet navy and the absence of any foreign navy which even comes close to challenging the American navy, the Pentagon is still planning to spend about $7.5 billion for nine new Aegis destroyers. This money could be channeled into Head Start without any decrease in our military safety.
Cleaning-up and improving the environment, like our educational system, is another big domestic task confronting the country.
The United States is confronted by a staggering environmental mess. Ralph De Gennaro is a senior analyst at Friends of the Earth/Environmental Policy Institute. He has closely studied the financial costs of cleaning-up the environment.
RALPH De GENNARO: If you just look at pollution clean-up costs, we've estimated that we have an environmental deficit, a clean-up cost that we are leaving our children of about
$500 billion cost to the federal government, to the US taxpayer, and about a trillion dollars total if you count the cost to states, and local governments, and private industry.
NARRATOR: During the cold war, the American government was a terrible environmental polluter. In several communities throughout the United States, the environment was damaged in the rush to make nuclear bombs. The Department of Energy, or DOE, which manages the production of nuclear weapons, dumped and released extremely hazardous materials into the air, ground and water.
The is what the General Accounting Office, or GAO, the federal government's watch dog agency, said in a video report to Congress about the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex.
GAO Video: "For over 40 years, DOE has been contaminating the environment by following disposal practices that allow hazardous and radioactive waste to enter the soil and ground water.
"Practices contributing to environmental contamination include disposing of liquid or solid waste in unlined trenches or basins. Over the years, as more waste is added, or as rain water drains through the waste, the waste migrates down into the surrounding soil, where it will eventually contaminate the ground water.
"The ground water at nearly all DOE defense installations is contaminated to some degree... In some cases, the level of contamination exceeds the standards for drinking water hundreds and even thousands of times."
NARRATOR: The General Accounting Office thinks it will cost as much as $200 billion to clean-up that mess.
That's almost as much as the United States has been spending every year to help defend Europe. For years, we've been paying about $170 billion each year just to do that. And the Pentagon wants to keep 150,000 US troops there indefinitely.
Since a prosperous Europe no longer needs our military forces, we can now save a lot of money and apply the savings to cleaning-up the nuclear weapons complex.
Besides the Department of Energy, the Defense Depart-ment also has had a terrible record of polluting. For years, the military dumped on its bases and installations toxic substances such as dangerous solvents, poisonous chemicals and the raw ingredients of deadly chemical weapons. According to the Pentagon's Inspector General's Office, it will cost from $100- to $200 billion to clean-up all the military bases in the United States.
Imagine the progress that could be made if the $100 billion that would have to be spent on the current plans for Star Wars were instead used to clean-up America's military bases. That's right. The current plan for Star Wars could cost up to $100 billion over the coming years. That money could go a long way toward reducing the $500 billion environmental deficit Ralph De Gennaro was speaking about a few moments ago.
Or, more specifically, for the cost of 370 new Tomahawk cruise missiles the Pentagon wants to buy over the next two years, about $500 million, we could clean up fifteen of the worst hazardous waste dumps.
A polluted environment affects the air we breath and the water we drink.
Another problem, the housing crisis, literally hits us where we live. One extreme end of the afford-able housing crisis is the dramatic increase in homeless people.
According to one study done by the National Housing Task Force, a congressionally chartered commission, more public housing is needed. At least $4.5 billion a year is needed in order to increase the supply of low income housing units.
But $4 billion is what the Pentagon wants from Congress just this year so that it can buy four more B-2 stealth bombers. In 1984, there were an estimated 250- to 350,000 homeless people. Today, estimates range from about 600,000 to three million people.
The direction of federal spending and government policies during the 1980s was one of the major causes for the increased number of homeless people. While money was lavished on the Pentagon, it was channeled away from hundreds of thousands of poor, disabled and emotionally troubled people who at one time received government assistance. That assistance helped keep a roof over their heads. Eligibility requirements for federal programs, such as Supplemental Security Income, were restricted and many families had their benefits reduced.
Dr. Martha Burt is the insightful director of the Social Services Research Program at the Urban Institute. Her recent book, Over the Edge: The Growth of Homelessness in the 1980s, is an in-depth study into the causes of homelessness.
Her research shows that, during the 1980s, the share of poor children covered by the government program Aid to Families with Dependent Children shrank by 25 percent. And while, in 1980, is was rare to find children among the homeless, by 1987,
10 percent of homeless households had children.
MARTHA BURT: The value of benefits have gone down, if you're dependent on benefits. If you're disabled and you get SSI, or you get Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or you get, as a last resort, general assistance, the dollar value of those things has not kept pace with inflation. At the same time, the housing prices have escalated. So, all of these things sort of converge.
NARRATOR: Most of the people we spoke to in the nation's capital about affordable housing, homelessness and government spending priorities agreed with Ethal White.
ETHAL WHITE: I think they need it right here for the people, you know, housing, housing for the people. There are so many homeless people don't have no place to stay, really need it. It's too many places boarded-up in the District of Columbia and we need housing.
NARRATOR: Ethal White is right. There are a lot of boarded-up apartments in the District of Columbia, and in the United States. According to one study, there are about 1,300,000 public housing units that are in need of being fixed-up, but aren't, largely because there isn't enough money to fix them.
What would it cost to meet America's housing needs? The exact costs are hard to calculate. But according to one study, for $20 billion, the United States could modernize its aging stock of public housing.
If the Air Force didn't spend an estimated $26 billion in the future to buy a new fleet of C-17 planes, which were originally designed to transport cargo in a war against the Soviet Union, there would be more than enough to rehabilitate America's public housing. And for about what the United States spends on buying an aircraft carrier battle group, about
$18 billion, all families with very low incomes could receive housing subsidies so they can have adequate housing.
Another pressing need is our rundown networks of roads and highways, trains and mass transit systems. Just as you've probably noticed the drastic increase of homeless people on the streets, you've probably experienced the sorry state of America's crumbling transportation system.
MIKE MILLS: The condition of the infrastructure right now is pretty bad.
NARRATOR: Mike Mills is a reporter for Congressional Quarterly. For the past few years, his beat has been transportation infrastructure.
Mr. MILLS: The last study that the Federal Highway Administration did of its roads and bridges, the roads and bridges that get federal money, they reported that 41 percent of all United States bridges were either functionally obsolete or deficient, which is a pretty sad figure, and about a third of all America's roads are classified in either fair or poor condition.
NARRATOR: From 1956 to 1980, federal investment in highways grew rapidly, from $800 million a year to $10 billion a year. However, during the 1980s, federal investment was inadequate.
Federal spending on mass transit was also cut. Today, we've fallen way behind in investing in our transportation systems.
Mr. MILLS: The United States ranks 55th in capital investment in all industrialized nations, which is a pretty pathetic figure. The percentage of GNP that the United States puts toward its infrastructure is only 13 percent, which Senator Patrick Moynihan calls a "medieval growth rate."
Compared to other specific countries, countries like Japan, Austria and Switzerland, which spend more per their GNP dollar than the United States on their roads, and those three countries also make a huge investment in their rail and more people ride trains in those countries.
NARRATOR: We've paid a steep price for this neglect of America's transportation network. Flight delays at congested airports cost America's airlines and other businesses at least
$5 billion a year, the gasoline wasted as cars and trucks idle in traffic jams, the productive hours lost, the damage done to the environment and frayed nerves are impossible to calculate, but must run into the billions.
Some members of Congress would like to do for the United States what we did for Kuwait after the war.
Mr. MILLS: One interesting analogy that is drawn by Bob Roe of New Jersey, who's the chairman of the Public Works Committee, is that we came in after the Persian Gulf war and rebuilt Kuwait City. The Army Corps of Engineers went out there and helped build Kuwait's infrastructure. Why can't we take that same kind of effort and put it toward our own roads? And I think that really had a lot of resonance with lawmakers because they started to see that we're going to have to start paying attention to our own priorities.
NARRATOR: How much will it cost to overhaul America's vast transportation network?
According to one study, about $91 billion is needed to modernize and expand all of America's mass transit systems. But that's about what the Pentagon will spend on the F-22 fighter plane. $114 billion is what Congress is expected to pay for a new fleet of fighters over the next 23 years, planes initially designed to fight against Soviet fighters that will never be built now that the Soviet Union no longer exists.
If we didn't buy the F-22, a lot of that $114 billion could be spent on rebuilding and expanding our subways, light rails, trains and buses.
For over 40 years, Americans sacrificed as the government fought the cold war. During that time, we failed to invest adequately in America. Now that we've won the cold war, let's take advantage of winning.
If we let the Japanese defend themselves, we could bring our schools up to international standards, and more. If we stop defending an affluent Europe, we could save $170 billion a year and use that money to clean up the nuclear contamination of the environment, and more. If we don't buy the C-17 cargo plane, we could rebuild America's public housing stock. And if we don't buy the F-22 fighter, we could modernize and expand our mass transportation systems.
Despite its problems, the United States is a great country with a vibrant democracy. Once the American people decide how they want their taxes spent in the future, the resources can be found to deal with the problems.
Admiral LaROCQUE: Well, we're all aware of the problems that we face in this country and I think we all know the solutions, but it's going to take a little money. There are a lot of suggestions in this country that the military budget be cut and it's just a question of how much and how soon. Many people, who are serious analysts, have examined the problem and are pretty well convinced that we could cut our military spending much more rapidly and a much larger amount.
I hope you found the program interesting. And until next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE
MONITOR," I'm Gene LaRocque.
[Over credits]
Defense Secretary CHENEY: "...building and deploying SDI, GPALS, the Global Protection System, I think is a crucial item for us and it is fully funded in this year's budget. The F-22 we want to continue with, of course, the next generation air superiority fighter. That program's well in hand and this will produce the first initial buy, I believe, in '96.
"The Burke Class DDG-51 destroyer continues. The C-17 aircraft is a vital program for us to replace the C-141. We flew the wings off those in the Gulf last year and we badly need to bring on-line this new strategic lift capability.
"The other programs on there I think speak for them-selves. The B-2 bomber's listed because we
are spending money on it in '93 in our proposal to close out the buy."
[End of broadcast.)
CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"
(Center for Defense Information).
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