US fund for Iraq, Afghan wars exceeds Bush era

On tax day analysts say new military budget is more of the same

CAIRO (AlArabiya.net)

As Americans prepared to pay their taxes Wednesday, a new report shows that the Obama administration's request from congress an increase war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the spending of the previous administration.

With an estimate 7.6 billion hours spent complying with tax filing requirements and the worst economic situation since the Great Depression, many have called into question how the government spends their hard-earned money, especailly in controversial wars that have dragged on for years.

Iraq and Afghanistan

Joe Comerford, executive director of NPP

At least $77 billion tax dollars will be spent to support the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year with $130 billion allocated in 2010 to support “ongoing overseas contingency operations,” the new term for these wars.

According to the National Priorities Project, which analyses federal data to show how American tax money is spent, the total cost since 2001 of both wars -- including approved spending and the pending supplemental – is an estimated $907 billion.

Despite promises from the new administration to make "a sweeping shift" in national security priorities and resources from the Bush years and to decrease war spending, currently at 45 percent of the world's total, more and more of American tax money goes towards funding wars rather than improving healthcare, education or renewable energy services.

“In a departure from previous years, NPP is releasing total war spending for both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and launching a cost of war counter for Afghanistan,” notes Jo Comerford, executive director of NPP.

“While we applaud Defense Department efforts to cut waste and unnecessary weapons systems, we are mindful that the current efforts facilitate a shift of funds within the U.S. military budget rather than amounting to a substantial budget decrease.”

More of the same

Miriam Pemberton, Institute for Policy Studies

The report suggests that the Obama administration's requested budget is no sweeping departure from its predecessor. Despite slowing the rate of increase in the base military budget, Obama has not cut the Bush-era base military budget but has rather requested more money for the Pentagon than the Bush administration ever did.

“If President Obama gets the budget he requested today, we’d be spending 13 times the money engaging the rest of the world through the military as by any other means,” said Miriam Pemberton, a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies who leads the Unified Security Budget task force with Center for American Progress senior fellow Lawrence Korb.

"[T]his budget perpetuates the upward trajectory of defense spending, it's higher than any of the Bush budgets that preceded it, and it increases funding for some programs that I think are a mistake," Pemberton continued.

Budget cuts on well-entrenched programs are met with sudden increases in funding for irregular and counter-insurgency operations.

Gates cuts big projects

Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recently proposed cuts in several major weapons project while re-orienting the armed forces towards counter-insurgency warfare against non-state groups as opposed to large-scale wars against countries.

"These past few years have revealed underlying flaws in the priorities, cultural preferences and reward structures of America's defense establishment," Gates told a press conference earlier this month. "There have been enough studies, enough hand-wringing, enough rhetoric. Now is the time for action."

Cutbacks in lucrative and high-profile weapons programs include the F-22 fighter program which was to end after the Pentagon buys four more fighters this year and the missile defense, whose budget will be reduced to 1.4 billion and cancelling the vehicle component of the Army's Future Combat Systems modernization program.

However these cuts have not marked a fundamental reshaping of the U.S. defense establishment, analysts said because the budget simultaneously accelerated other programs no less deserving of cuts as well like the F-35 joint strike fighter, whose purchase will more than double from 14 to 30 in 2010.

Gates also announced an additional $2 billion for intelligence, espionage and surveillance and this includes an additional 50 Predator and Reaper drones.