• Home
  • News
  • Reference
  • Contact Us
  • Donate
May 29, 2013

Cut Social Security and Veterans’ Benefits? Cut the Pentagon Instead

2. Cost To Our Country, 3. ITS EFFECT ON OUR COUNTRY

By Robert Naiman
Truthout

[…]

Consider the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Last year, Winslow Wheeler reported that theacquisition cost for the F-35 had risen to $379.4 billion for 2,457 aircraft. That’s just the cost to buy the planes, not to fly and maintain them. According to Wheeler, “The current appraisal for operations and support is $1.1 trillion – making for a grand total of $1.5 trillion, or more than the annual GDP of Spain.”

Assuming that everything is proportional (and that these costs don’t further escalate, which Wheeler assures us they will), if the F-35 costs $1.5 trillion for 2,457 planes, that’s $610 million per plane. How many F-35s would we have to not buy in order to spare seniors, veterans and the disabled from getting whacked? We would only have to not buy $163 billion worth, or 267 planes. That would still leave 2,190 planes. We could reduce the number of F-35s we purchase by just over 10 percent – cut one single weapons system by 10 percent – and save as much money as President Obama proposes to save by whacking seniors, veterans and the disabled.

Lastly, consider Pentagon contracting: the Project On Government Oversight notes that “every year for the last five years the Pentagon has spent more than $360 billion purchasing goods and services from contractors” and that “service contractors can cost, on average, 2.94 times more than an average Pentagon civilian employee performing the same job.”

Suppose it were true that it costs 2.9 times as much to do things through contractors as it does to use Pentagon employees. That’s a different statistic – I’m substituting an apple for an orange. We don’t actually have the numbers that we need to do the right calculation, because as POGO notes, the public doesn’t have access to contractor workforce size and cost data. But what we’re after here is just a rough sense of what Pentagon spending choices and cuts to Social Security and veterans’ benefits look like when you put them on the same scale. The actual policy choice we need to make to protect Social Security and veterans’ benefits and cut the Pentagon budget is merely to kill the grand bargain and let the sequester-level budget caps on discretionary spending stand.

[…]

SOURCE

The Most Expensive Weapon Ever Built The Jet That Ate The Pentagon – Brave New Foundations (8 minute film)

Related Posts

Neale Lunderville - COURTNEY LAMDIN ©️ SEVEN DAYS

News, 2. Cost To Our Country

Vermont Gas to Pay for Some F-35 Soundproofing

Chittenden County residents living under F-35 jets for a year

News, 2. Cost To Our Country, 6. Harm To Children

Chittenden County residents living under F-35 jets for a year

Burlington International Airport - FILE: MATTHEW THORSEN

News, 2. Cost To Our Country

BTV Airport Gets Grants for Noise Mitigation, Sound Monitoring

Search

News by Category

  • All News
    • Local News
    • Out of State News
  • Nuclear Threats From and To Vermont
  • Cost To Our Country
  • Technological Disaster
  • Military-Industrial-Political Corruption
  • Adverse Health Impacts
  • Harm To Children
  • Legal Actions
  • Activism
  • Safety
  • Leahy’s Legacy of F-35 Lies and Corruption
  • Vermont National Guard Scandals

Follow us on Twitter!

  • "Do F-35s Fight Pandemics?" Amid Covid-19 Outbreak Lawmakers Pushing For Even More Useless Pentagon Spending -… https://t.co/TJ1sKZxn00 March 27, 2020
  • The F-35 Stealth Fighter Still Has Hundreds of Flaws https://t.co/Li9uZ6GpY5 @OurSkies @stopthef35 @CANBVT1 @AARPVT… https://t.co/KmANpIZxFy March 14, 2020
  • Opposition‌ ‌of‌ ‌F-35‌ ‌fighter‌ ‌jets‌ ‌in‌ ‌Madison‌ ‌leads‌ ‌public‌ ‌forum‌ | The Daily Cardinal… https://t.co/et9YbmmlCZ February 15, 2020
  • Pentagon Assessment Finds Issues With F-35 Fighter Jets https://t.co/mpjLzwskoi @vprnet @CANBVT1 @OurSkies… https://t.co/IX37dofZuB February 12, 2020
  • A whistleblower lawsuit accusing Pratt & Whitney of doctoring F-22 engine inspection reports just got a major boost… https://t.co/dSFUrzWIKk October 26, 2019
@f35intelligence

Categories

Archives

SOSVT Archives

    TO BE ADDED TO OUR EMAIL LIST