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Obama War Budget Breaks All Records � But When Will Black America Break with Him?

Wed, 12/29/2010 - 00:23 � Glen Ford

The Republican House majority hadn't even taken their seats yet, but their presence wasn't necessary to pass the biggest military budget since World War II. Not only can't Obama blame his wars on George Bush, but the First Black President has dramatically outdone his predecessor in expenditures on the machinery of death. �Yet only 12 Black members of Congress can bring themselves to vote against Obama's wars.�

On Capitol Hill, resistance to U.S. militarism has all but collapsed � and the Republican majority in the U.S. House has not even arrived, yet. With no opposition whatsoever in the Senate, and only 48 nay votes in the House, the Congress last week passed the biggest military budget since the end of World War Two. Only 42 Democrats, including just 12 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, dared to defy their warmongering president and compliant House leadership.

From the moment that Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, we at Black Agenda Report have been predicting that he would become the most pro-war president in modern American history. Forget about the Obama�s phony rhetoric; the proof is in the numbers.

The military budget firmly cements Barack Obama�s place as the biggest pro-war president in two generations. Today, the United States, although it is the world�s only superpower, spends almost as much as all of the rest of the world�s militaries, combined. The U.S. defense authorization for 2011 is $725 billion. China, with the second most expensive military machine on the planet, spends less than $80 billion a year.

If Barack Obama lasts for eight years in office, he is on track to spend $5 trillion dollars on the Pentagon, significantly more than George Bush, who in turn spent a lot more than Ronald Reagan. But, as they say on the TV commercials, that's not all. The defense budget doesn�t include expenditures for Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy, military aid to other countries through the Department of State, NASA space programs that are really military projects, the military retirement fund run out of the Department of Treasury, and the interest payments on past military expenditures that were financed by debt. Inclusion of those hidden costs of war would bring military-related spending to well over $1 trillion dollars a year � and rising all the time.

[Junior]

Why is nobody interested in talking about this?

a) Everyone is already really disappointed with Obama and tired of the subject.
b) Everyone has already given way to total political apathy.
c) Everyone is ashamed to admit that the doomsayers were right.
d) There are plenty of other threads discussing this already.

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In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan
http://www.cnsnews.com/node/72404

[Louis VI]

Exactly 50 years ago, Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex.

[Fox]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[mises]

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[chellovek]