The Cost of U.S. Militarism

by Krista Zimmerman

The federal budget can be a daunting thing to care about. It contains trillions of dollars and takes months of political horse trading to enact. Many years it’s never finished and few people have ever read the entire document.

But passing the federal budget is one of the most vital tasks Congress performs. The budget allocates funds to important people, powerful interest groups and the very poor. It reflects the common concerns of the nation’s citizenry in cold hard cash.

According to Len Nichols, an economist at the New America Foundation, the federal budget is essentially a “memo to God,” setting forth a list of the nation’s priorities.
The U.S. FY2006 memo (repeated for FY2007) identified military spending as the top U.S. priority. In fact, the United States valued military programs so much that it spent more than half the discretionary budget on them. This money helped purchase:

• The world's largest aircraft carriers;
• The only stealth aircraft fleet in the world;
• Precision missiles capable of striking anywhere on the planet; and
• A deadly nuclear arsenal.

At the same time, general health services (excluding veteran’s benefits) received a paltry 6 percent of total discretionary spending.

So it should come as no surprise that while the United States ranks first among industrialized nations in nuclear weapons capabilities, it is dead last at providing access to health care for children. More than 9 million children in the Unites States lack health insurance.

50 years go, President Eisenhower warned about the human costs of militarism:

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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of it laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children….

And the Gospel of James teaches that ignoring human need is like practicing a dead faith.

If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

(James 2:15-17).

So this year, ask Congress to make responding to human need its top priority and to reflect that priority in the budget. It’s time to prioritize health care coverage for children, educational opportunities, rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast, affordable housing and vital community building programs such as the Social Services Block Grants.

Ask Congress to write a new memo: one that eschews militarism for mutual aid and that prioritizes people over warheads.