Slash Military Spending: “Defense” Budgets are Bigger than Ever Before, by Ryan McMaken

There’s no chance deficits can be closed without huge whacks out of the military budget. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:

It should go without saying that asking generals and other Pentagon bureaucrats about defense spending is like asking your barber if you need a haircut. They are hardly disinterested observers. 

So, it’s not surprising at all that the usual pentagon uniformed technocrats, after failing their audit for the seventh time in a row, remain unrepentant. Last month, after failing to provide documentation showing the Pentagon actually knows what it does with its money, the DoD engaged in the song and dance we have come to expect. For example, the Pentagon’s CFO Michael McCord announced that in spite of its abysmal performance in its audit, the Department “has turned a corner in its understanding of the depth and breadth of its challenges.” “I think we’re making progress,” he added.

That’s swell, but it’s unclear that this “progress” amounts to much given that last year, the Pentagon admitted it can’t account for 63% of nearly $4 trillion in assets.

The Pentagon has never passed an audit since the agency became legally obligated to carry them out in 2018. 

Not that any of this matters in terms of any real consequences for the privileged class of parasite tax-eaters that are high ranking military officers and their corporate cronies at places like Boeing. 

Military spending just keeps growing to new historic highs every few years, even in inflation-adjusted dollars. 

Moreover, the dollars that go to the DoD directly are just part of the spending on so-called “defense.” The Pentagon effectively shares its functions with two other federal agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA, after all, is just an agency tasked with spending the deferred costs of previous military operations. That is, the VA delivers the benefits to veterans who were promised ongoing compensation—in the form of healthcare and other benefits—for military “service.” Without VA benefits, the Pentagon would never be able to recruit the troops it needs for its next round of foreign policy debacles. Thus, any true accounting for military budgets has to account for the long-term personnel costs that become apparent in VA spending.

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