By Steve Platt
Bernie Sanders isn’t crazy to support “free” tuition for public colleges. The most common argument against it is that it’s too expensive and we cannot afford it. I don’t think so. It’s really a matter of priorities.
Look at the facts: In fiscal 2014, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the United States federal budget was $3.433 trillion. The defense budget was 18 percent of the total, or $615 billion. The education budget was 2 percent of the total. The defense budget is nine times greater than the education budget.
Let’s look at how some of that $615 billion defense budget is spent:
BASES: The United States has over 700 military bases in 70-plus countries. There are military personnel in 150 countries. Great Britain, France and Russia have a total of 30 foreign bases combined. In the U.S., the military has bases in every state (except Vermont, not counting the National Guard). Does California really need 40 bases, Florida 29 bases, Texas 28 bases, etc.?
PERSONNEL: Some of the largest and most successful corporations in the U.S. have a ratio of managers to employees of approximately 10 to 1. The ratio of officers to enlisted personnel in the military is 4.7 to 1. The Pentagon has 37 four-star generals and flag officers on the payroll, more four-stars than served during World War II when the military had 10 times the number of enlisted personnel! A May 2013 government accountability office (GAO) analysis found that support staff at the Defense Department’s Combatant command headquarters grew by “about 50 percent between 2002 and 2012.” This created more distance between commanders and those who fight. At the time, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said: “In some cases the gap between me and an action officer may be as many as 30 layers” resulting “in a bureaucracy which has the fine motor skills of a dinosaur.”
EQUIPMENT: I’m all for having the most technologically superior military on the planet. But, there is a limit to the level of duplication, inefficiency and waste. The U.S. already has the capability to carpet bomb any point on earth multiple times over without using nuclear weapons. The U.S. Army has 8,848 operational tanks. Russia has 2,400 operational tanks, a greater than 3-to-1 advantage.
The Marines started the V22 Osprey Tilt rotor program to replace the Heavy Lift CH53 helicopter in 1981 with a development budget of $2.5 billion. By 1988, $27 billion had been spent with another $27 billion required for 458 aircraft ... for a total of $54-plus billion. That’s an average cost, including development of a $110 million per aircraft. In 1988, Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, tried to kill the program. He was overruled by Congress, which provided unrequested funding for the program.
The Navy planned the new Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyers as a “multi-mission” stealth ship. The Navy planned to acquire 32 ships with a research and development (R&D) plan of $9.6 billion and a cost per ship of $1.2 billion each. As the R&D costs skyrocketed to $22.5 billion, the Navy reduced the quantity from 32 to 24, then to 7 and 3. The cost per ship has risen from $1.2 billion to $7.5 billion per ship.
The U.S. Navy advertises it has 10 aircraft carriers. It has 19. A few years ago, when the Navy ran into trouble justifying more carriers, they changed the name of the requested carriers to “amphibious assault ships” to grease the appropriation process.
Finally, consider the F35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive military program ever. The development cost is currently $627 billion and rising. The first 14 test aircraft cost $200 billion. The Air Force plans to procure 2,457 F35s at an additional $400 billion for a total combined cost for development, procurement, maintenance/operation spares in excess of $1 trillion. And, in a highly embarrassing recent F35 flight test, as reported by Aviation Week last year, Lockheed Martin’s trillion-dollar baby was “soundly outclassed” and waxed in a mock dogfight by an old F16, the aircraft it is expected to replace. The F35 costs nearly twice as much to operate per hour as an F16. The F35 program is an unmitigated disaster.
The Department of Defense’s record of actual expenditures for development and acquisition for all major weapons procurement programs is pathetic. According to the latest GAO report on average, for all major procurement programs, the average R&D cost increased by 52.8 percent over original plan. The average total acquisition costs 48.6 percent over plans. Average delivery delays increased by 28.9 months. There’s no corporation that could be 52.8 percent over on development expense, 48.6 percent over on procurement or manufacturing cost, 2.4 years late in scheduled first delivery and still be in business.
Place Table
Might we be spending too much on defense compared to infrastructure and education? I know it’s sometimes said that touching Social Security is like touching the “third rail.” The same can also be said for defense 10 times over. Sadly, any politician that even suggests that defense spending needs to be cut is branded as a “pacifist,” “anti-military,” or worse.
As with any family budget, spending is about setting priorities: sending Johnny to preschool or a week at Disney World. Our government needs to do the same. We are spending far too much of our national treasure on defense. With the political handcuffs removed, any newly minted MBA could easily cut $150 billion annually from defense spending over four to eight years. That would allow the education and transportation budgets to double. The United States has the resources to send every student capable of college work to college without raising any taxes and increase the spending on roads, bridges and other much needed infrastructure repair and replacement. We just must be willing to reprioritize and eliminate a few bases, a few generals, a few aircraft carriers and a few hundred F35 aircraft. It’s just a matter of priority.
Platt lives in Warren.
