Budget Committee Proposes Slashing State And Foreign Aid Budgets While Increasing Pentagon Funding

[G_j]

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/23/budget-defense-clinton/


Senate Budget Committee Proposes Slashing State And Foreign Aid Budgets While Increasing Pentagon Funding

In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama called for a “non-security” discretionary spending freeze to help bring down the deficit. He proposed exempting “security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security,” as well as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

On a party-line vote of 12 to 10 yesterday, the Senate Budget Committee approved “a $3.7 trillion budget blueprint” that goes further than Obama’s plan by “slicing $9.5 billion from discretionary spending in fiscal year 2011.” Under the Senate Budget Committee blueprint, approximately half of the savings would come from dramatic cuts to the budgets of the State Department and other international aid programs. Nevertheless, the committee decided to actually increase the Defense Department’s funding:

2011 federal spending plan approved by the committee Thursday on a 12-10 vote provides $573.8 billion for the Defense Department, which includes $133 billion for contingency operations. The amount makes the Defense Department one of the few federal agencies to see a budget increase; the non-war funding part of the defense budget would represent a 3.5 percent increase over 2010 funding.

Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Department Secretary Robert Gates supported full funding for Obama’s foreign affairs budget request. In her letter to Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) on April 20, Clinton argued that international aid is actually more “cost-effective” than military spending:

Our investments in development and diplomacy are smart, cost-effective, and squarely in the best interests of American taxpayers and our national security. They are relatively small compared to the cost of active military engagement, and they can end up delivering impactful savings. In Iraq, for example, our $2.6 billion request for State and USAID will allow the Defense Department budget to decrease by about $16 billion — a powerful illustration of the return on civilian investments.

..more..

[G_j]

1. ==

[unhappycamper]

2. A whole $9.5 billion?

Zonkers, we can get out the sandbox 33 days earlier than expected.

$9.5 billion / $200,000 per minute /60 seconds / 24 hours = 32.986 days

[G_j]

3. an unbelievable

waste :-(

[Flaneur]

4. Fuck the war machine. Zero out that imperial war budget.

[Hawkowl]

5. Obama = cowardly war monger

As if "defense" (should be called the War Department) is non-discretionary. The whole budget is a giant deadly farce, when over half of it is off limits and actually drags down our country and economy instead of strengthening it. For Obama to go along and encourage this make believe game of crushing-the-goat-herders-of-Afghanistan-to-prevent-world-wide-armageddon (for the most expensive price ever!), Is simply gross, criminal, negligence on the part of the president.