Veteran defense analyst William Hartung explains America’s endless wars and what can be done to end them.
The question is: What will the nation’s budget priorities be going forward? Both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have called for reductions in Pentagon spending, with Warren singling out the Pentagon’s war budget, the so-called Overseas Contingency Operations account, or OCO, in particular for elimination. OCO has been used as a slush fund not only to pay for those wars, but also to fund tens of billions of dollars in Pentagon pet projects that have nothing to do with our current conflicts. Eliminating it alone could save up to $800 billion over the next decade for other uses.
There has recently been a surge of proposals aimed at cutting the soaring Pentagon budget in significant ways. My own organization, the Center for International Policy, for example, has created a Sustainable Defense Task Force made up of ex-White House and congressional budget experts, former Pentagon officials and military officers, and analysts from think tanks across the political spectrum. Our group has already outlined a plan that would save $1.25 trillion from current Pentagon projections over the next decade.
Meanwhile, a group of more than 20 progressive organizations called #PeopleOverPentagon has proposed $2 trillion in cuts over that decade and the Poor People’s Campaign, working from an analysis done by the Institute for Policy Studies, would up that to $3.5 trillion, while investing the savings in urgent domestic needs.
Source: Tomgram: William Hartung, Lessons From Battling the Pentagon for Four Decades | TomDispatch
