If America can find $716bn for the military, it can fund the Green New Deal

If America can find $716bn for the military, it can fund the Green New Deal

If we redirected the trillions spent on fruitless wars, funding Medicare for All and a Green New Deal is perfectly realistic

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The Sunrise Movement organized a protest to pressure Senator Mitch McConnell to support the Green New Deal on 25 February in Washington DC. Photograph: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

At long last the political debate in the world’s richest country is vibrant with proposals that would help the most vulnerable in our society. And what do we hear in response? A growing chorus of naysayers. “Just pipe dreams” – that’s how the Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson referred to proposals for guaranteed jobs, Medicare for All, universal childcare, and the Green New Deal. Like many other pundits and politicians, Samuelson says we can’t afford such luxuries. Taxing the rich wouldn’t raise enough money. We’d have no choice but to resort to deficit spending.

Funny how some politicians have no qualms about ballooning the deficit with tax cuts for the rich but balk at investing in the long-term health of our people and communities. Just as peculiar: the fact that military spending cuts are virtually never mentioned as an option for freeing up funds for social good instead of war. This year the US military budget is $716bn – and boy is it ripe for slashing. That military budget represents about 53 cents of every discretionary dollar in the federal budget – and it’s one of the biggest reasons that people so often throw up their hands and shake their heads when they think about funding innovative ways to end poverty.

They don’t need to throw up their hands, though. The politicians and pundits should just start listening to children.When young organizers from the Sunrise Movement recently challenged Senator Dianne Feinstein to support a Green New Deal, she told them “there’s no money to pay for it”. She probably didn’t expect those eight- and 10- and 11-year-old kids to respond immediately: “Yes, there is, there’s tons of money going to the military.” Feinstein responded condescendingly that the military does “important things” with that money. Our never-ending wars say otherwise. Last year saw the highest number of civilians killed in the Afghanistan war since the UN began keeping track – more than 3,800 people, 930 of them children. About a quarter of them were killed by US and Nato troops and their Afghan government allies – and most of those by US-Nato airstrikes and drone attacks. Thousands more were injured.
Advertisement. Committing such mayhem doesn’t come cheap. Last year alone, the war in Afghanistan, in its 17th year, cost about $45bn. And that’s just the immediate cost of fighting the war – it doesn’t include the costs of caring for injured US soldiers, let alone Afghan victims. It doesn’t include training more soldiers to replace the ones occupying Afghanistan now, or the enormous sums spent on the base Pentagon budget.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/06/progressive-agenda-us-military-funding