Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Bush Budget Adds to Military, Cuts Prevention

Miriam Pemberton and Anita Dancs / Foreign Policy Focus

Voters--Republicans and Democrats alike--are telling pollsters they want, not a modest course correction, not a turned page, but a whole new book. The security budget President Bush proposed today is anything but.

Every year since 2004, according to analysis by the Task Force on a Unified Security Budget for the United States, published by the Institute for Policy Studies, nearly 90% of security spending, excluding the supplemental appropriations for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, has been devoted to achieving security by military force. Spending on prevention tools, including diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid, contributions to international organizations and homeland security put together accounts for only 10% of the security budget. This year is no exception.

This year military spending even excluding expenditures on the wars we are actually fighting will be higher than at any time since World War II. It will exceed the military spending of all other nations combined. If President George W. Bush gets the budget he has requested, we will spend in the 2009 fiscal year 18 times the money engaging the rest of the world through the military as by any other means.

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