In our FCNL lobbying in Washington and around the country, we have demonstrated that both Democrats and Republicans can be moved to question why the Pentagon cannot account for its spending and acknowledge that our country cannot be defended by bullets alone.
But what do we do now that Congress has voted for increases in Pentagon spending for the next two years?
This month, senators from both major political parties provided a stark reminder of the power of militarism and military contractors in our society when, by a vote of 71-28, lawmakers voted to give the Pentagon a total of $700 billion in 2018 and $716 billion in 2019. Congress is now giving the Pentagon so much money that military leaders are saying they can’t even decide how to spend all that money before the fiscal year ends in September.
We saw serious public pushback from the FCNL community and Advocacy Teams, and we heard members of Congress say that this often-ignored issue got a lot more attention this year. That’s because of you. Privately, I’ve heard prominent Democrats and some Republican staff note that the Pentagon should be able to “get by” on last year’s total of $600 billion. But publicly, the leadership of both major political parties has embraced increased Pentagon spending.
Militarism – as FCNL noted in a recent newsletter – permeates our society and we have much more work ahead. The Pentagon now spends more money, in inflation adjusted terms, than it did at the height of the Cold War or Vietnam. And President Trump, in his budget presented in early February, is proposing to continue growing military spending in the coming years. The Washington Post reports that one military contractor, Lockheed Martin, got $32 billion from the federal government last year – more than many federal agencies. “Diplomacy is out; airstrikes are in,” one aerospace consultant told the newspaper. In fact, the president is proposing cutting the budget for the State Department in 2019 by close to 30% while growing other spending (we’ll be working against that).
This spending surge will have very real and very deadly consequences. For example, according to the president’s own budget proposals, spending for nuclear weapons programs will grow even faster than other Pentagon spending. The president plans to put more money into low-yield, “useable” nuclear weapons and expand the use of drones while relaxing rules requiring the military to avoid civilian casualties. Even assuming (which I do) that we can prevent a nuclear war, the U.S. Central Command has acknowledged that civilian casualties from U.S. military action have grown in the last year.
The bigger picture
Our biggest task must be to build congressional and public support for a different vision of the U.S. role in the world. As a matter of faith, we believe in a world free of war and the threat of war. As a matter of public policy, we believe that pouring ever-increasing sums of money into the military in an attempt to occupy and control the entire planet is both morally wrong and practically impossible.
As FCNL and our colleagues at AFSC outlined several years ago, our country will be safer and more secure when our leaders pursue collaborative strategies to reduce violent conflict, defend the rule of law and advance global prosperity through inclusive, democratic strategies that focus on ensuring human dignity for all. One place to start would be by Congress reasserting its constitutional role over when the U.S. goes to war – in Yemen, Korea or far front places around the globe such as Niger.
Our work ahead
Our lobbying on Pentagon spending in the last year also provides a good guide to some of the other work we need to do in the immediate future to build an effective Congressional push back against ever-growing Pentagon spending. The two year budget deal approved by Congress in early February has locked Pentagon spending for 2018 and 2019. Our work now, as Quakers have done over centuries, must be to bring the discussion back to Congress, to let members know that throwing even more money at the military is not only immoral, it is bad policy and it is dangerous.
As we discovered in the last year, we start this conversation with our values and our experience. We will continue this conversation in coming months, but here are a few of my initial ideas about how we can take the conversation into Congressional offices.
Take on the Readiness Crisis: In my own lobby visits I’ve found Democratic and Republican staff quick to spin a narrative of a hallowed out military where the planes don’t fly, the ships are ship shape and the troops aren’t ready for battle. $600 billion a year just doesn’t cut it, and now we wonder if even $700 billion will be enough to make ends meet. Read former White House OMB staffer Gordon Adam’s great response to this argument, or this Atlantic piece and then download this FCNL fact sheet.
Will the Pentagon pass an audit? Our lobbying together with Barbara Lee and many others has made the issue of auditing the Pentagon a higher priority. In 2018, the Pentagon hired a company to audit its spending. But Pentagon brass are clear that they don’t expect to pass an audit anytime soon and demanding answers about an audit is a way to focus attention on Pentagon spending that works in most congressional offices.
Waste, Fraud and Abuse. The Pentagon’s own internal study several years ago found $125 billion in potential savings over 5 years through better internal management. FCNL’s Fact Sheet identified four steps Congress could take to save $40 billion and start bringing some fiscal responsibility to Pentagon spending.
Congress funds weapons the Pentagon didn’t ask for. Another place to start would be to ask members of Congress to vote against weapons systems Congress funds that the Pentagon didn’t even ask for.
Cutting Pentagon spending cuts jobs. Many members of Congress are reluctant to cut Pentagon spending because they see a direct tie to jobs in their state or district. Although study after study has shown that Pentagon spending is the least effective way to create jobs, there is a big difference at the level of the individual between the job for a military contractor I have now and the job I might have because Pentagon spending is redirected to some new type of employment in the future.
What’s Next
Although in February 2018 Democrats in Congress argued publicly and privately that they were accepting increases in Pentagon spending in order to achieve much needed increases in spending on social programs that provide shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry and medical care for children, this type of trade off is fundamentally dangerous for our nation over the long term. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said back in 1967 “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Members of Congress cannot change this political calculus by themselves. That change must come from people in this country, acting together for what we believe is right.
