January and February are busy months for those who keep their eyes on federal military spending. Certain information from the FY 2011 budget request for the Pentagon has many people scratching their heads.

The Obama Administration has requested $708.3 billion dollars for the Defense Department for FY 2011 (which begins October 1, 2010). This is roughly a $9 billion dollar increase from the current year, FY 2010.  The budget does not contain all bad news: while there is an increase on spending for nuclear weapons, there is no funding for Reliable Replacement Warheads and there’s a notable increase in funding for nonproliferation. Laboratories such as Los Alamos also received a sizable increase. This funding increase makes the argument for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, in that the U.S. stockpile will not require testing in order to remain secure.

But even though the new budget cuts certain high-cost, frivolous programs such as the F-22 bomber, certain manned vehicle aspects of the Army’s modernization program, a midrange missile defense system and possibly eliminates an expensive naval cruiser, the budget maintains, and in fact feeds, the ongoing bloated defense spending.

The United States spends more on defense than at any time during the Cold War. Some argue this is needed to fight a multi-front war—but the Congressional Budget Office Report (The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2010-2020) notes that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost about $1 trillion dollars; yet, that is only 19% of the $5.3 trillion dollars the Defense Department spent in that time period. The Government Accountability Office estimates that nearly $300 billion was wasted in cost overruns (spending beyond original projections for a defense contract). Also, the situation begs the question: Do we really need these wars? And if we wound them down promptly, another trillion dollars could be saved—nothing to sneeze at—also noted in the CBO report, at Table 1-5.

How can we accept such irresponsible and reckless spending when other departments are facing a spending freeze and capped budgets? Consider, in the FY 2011 budget request, these numbers: Department of Education: $49.7 billion (7% of defense); Department of Health & Human Services: $81.3 billion (11% of defense); Department of State: $56.8 billion (8% of amount for defense spending).

The military-industrial complex about which President Eisenhower warned us has not disappeared. Unfortunately, this military budget has not made us safer than before—but it has burdened the American people with outrageous spending by their federal government.

Next time, we will examine how the recent opinion by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a case which equates free speech by individuals with unlimited spending on political campaigns by corporations, and which takes the idea of corporations as “legal persons” to an extreme which is contrary to a century of law, beginning with Teddy Roosevelt’s administration, laws specifically limiting corporate political spending in order to prevent corruption of the democratic process. See the stirring dissent by Justice John Paul Stevens, for the four-person minority in the 5-4 decision. Justice Stevens notes that this decision overturns a century of legislation and Court decisions which sought to prevent “[t]he evils of the use of [corporate] money in connection with political elections….”