My own little progressive "revolt" today at an "America Speaks" Community Forum today.

[CTyankee]

Three national public policy foundations sponsored this nationwide forum. The subject was the federal deficit. The question was how do we slash spending/increase revenue to halt the rise of the deficit by 2025.

We were a group of ordinary citizens (about 50-60)who met at a library in New Haven to make the "hard choices" necessary to achieve our goal.

We were given grave warnings that these choices would be "hard," we'd have to give up something, yadda yadda.

Our line items included Medicare, Medicaid, SS, Defense, "other" mandatory spending, education,etc, and taxation questions.

So we go thru the line items with lots of background info, pros and cons, on each question. Then we're given a tally sheet, with a dollar figure for each large cut/tax increase we agreed to.

We came in $100 billion over the goal(we even went back and restored some cuts to make it come out even)!

How? We were a group of progressives + lower income folks just barely making it on SS and Medicare. On just about every question we asked some simple questions, primarily centered on: is this regressive or progressive (tax policy, cuts in spending for middle/lower income folks) and voted accordingly.

We weren't buying some of the arguments FOR cutting Medicare/Medicaid and AGAINST certain changes in the tax policy that would (IMO) restore a proper balance between the "small people" and the rich. We took HUGE cuts out of the defense budget and voted FOR increased taxes on those who have been benefitting far too long from favoritism to the rich. There were questions: on the VAT, what assurances could we have that this would in reality be a "consumption" tax that doesn't affect food or health care costs? How would this affect ordinary people in their daily lives? We also (with some reservations) voted for a carbon tax.

I've just given a bare outline of everything we discussed today. But we sure as hell sent a message...they said it would go to Washington but who knows?

This was a living example, in just one day, of the "real people" of this country coming together and making a REAL tax policy that benefits the PEOPLE not the special interests...I started out the day feeling depressed and left feeling empowered...

all in all, a good day...

[wordpix]

1. here's a chart and information

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/securityspending/articles/022609_fy10_topline_global_defense_spending/&h=491&w=680&sz=46&tbnid=EfdE6bnERfGoKM:&tbnh=100&tbnw=139&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddefense%2Bspending%2B-%2Bchart&hl=en&usg=__1OdIRoEEsh8pplUlBjFqe1P_FLM=&sa=X&ei=O3omTJHFIISClAfOt5XCAg&ved=0CC8Q9QEwBQ

by Travis Sharp

February 26, 2009

The United States is far and away the global leader in defense spending. In 2007, the most recent year for which complete data is available, the United States approved $660 billion in defense budget authority (FY09 dollars). This figure includes funding for DOD’s base budget, DOE-administered nuclear weapons activities, and supplemental appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan.

* With its budget of $660 billion, the United States spent more on defense in 2007 than the next 14 highest spending countries in the world combined.
* The United States accounted for 43% of the world’s total defense spending in 2007.
* In 2007, the United States spent 4.6 times more on defense than China, 7.7 times more than Russia, 85.2 times more than Iran, and 100 times more than North Korea.

From 2005 to 2007, annual U.S. defense spending increased by $95 billion after adjusting for inflation. While this increase was greater in dollar terms than the annual defense budget of every country in the world except China, in percentage terms it only totaled 17% because the U.S. budget was relatively massive. The United States may spend far more on defense than any other country in the world, but it does not have the fastest growing defense budget in the world. That distinction belongs to Kazakhstan, which saw its defense budget increase by 84% from 2005 to 2007 after adjusting for inflation. (Table 6 below)

Press reports indicate that while some countries plan to rein in their defense spending in 2009 due to the sagging global economy, others will continue to increase their annual defense expenditures. Russian officials said in February 2009 that Moscow plans to submit an official 2009 budget of approximately $33 billion, a 15% cut from 2008. However, Russia still plans to spend $111 billion between 2009 and 2011 to purchase new weapons and modernize its armed forces. China has not yet announced its 2009 defense budget plans, but its official 2008 budget grew by 17.6% from the previous year. (Russia and China’s official figures significantly understate spending, as explained in the note on methodology below). India announced its intention to increase its defense budget in 2009 by 34% over the previous year’s level.

Table 5. Defense Spending by Countries of Interest, 2007
(in billions of constant FY09 U.S. dollars; U.S. figure includes war & nuclear funding)

Country 2007 Spending Global Rank

United States 660.0 1
China 144.5 2
Russia 85.3 3
United Kingdom 65.8 4
France 63.1 5
Germany 43.8 6
Japan 42.7 7
Italy 39.3 8
Saudi Arabia 36.9 9
South Korea 27.6 10
Israel 12.1 17
Taiwan 10.0 20
Iran 7.7 23
North Korea 6.6 28
Pakistan 4.7 33
Venezuela 2.9 49

Table/Chart Notes: U.S. figure includes funding for wars and nuclear weapons. North Korea figure is estimate from U.S. State Department. Data from Congressional Research Service, Office of Management and Budget, International Institute for Strategic Studies, State Department

Table 6. Countries with Fastest Growing Defense Spending Between 2005 and 2007
(real growth adjusted for inflation; U.S. figure includes war & nuclear funding)

Country Real Growth, 2005-2007 Global Rank
Kazakhstan 84% 1
Angola 80% 2
Ukraine 57% 3
Jordan 57% 4
Slovakia 55% 5
Thailand 51% 6
Austria 50% 7
Brazil 46% 8
Romania 45% 9
Indonesia 42% 10
Russia 33% 13
China 27% 19
United States 17% 28
France 8% 44
United Kingdom 5% 50
Germany 4% 51

Table Notes: U.S. figure includes funding for wars and nuclear weapons. Data from Congressional Research Service, Office of Management and Budget, International Institute for Strategic Studies.
A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY

Estimating other countries’ military spending is no easy task. Besides the complications involved in comparing different currencies, there is no such thing as an agreed-upon international definition for “defense expenditure.” Many countries count spending differently. Transparency is also an issue because some countries may not want the international community to know exactly how much they spend on defense.

The analysis above uses data from The Military Balance 2009, the authoritative reference almanac produced annually by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. A few words are needed on the defense spending estimates for China and Russia. Both of these countries regularly underreport their annual military budgets. The Military Balance 2009 typically uses market exchange rates to convert countries’ defense spending figures into U.S. dollars. In the case of China and Russia, however, the market exchange rates fail to fully reflect the purchasing power of the yuan and the ruble, respectively. To compensate for this, The Military Balance 2009 uses a methodology known as Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) to calculate a more balanced figure. With the exception of the 2007 figure for China, all of the figures for China and Russia in the analysis above use PPP figures, which are significantly higher than both officially reported and market exchange rate figures. The 2007 figure for China uses the high-end estimate provided by DOD in its annual report on China’s military power because a PPP figure is not included in The Military Balance 2009.

The bottom line is that this analysis uses the highest possible defense spending estimates for China and Russia. This is a departure from the methodology utilized in previous versions of this analysis.
Travis Sharp 202-546-0795 ext. 2105 [e-mail]

Travis Sharp is the Military Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. He has published articles on defense policy in scholarly journals, internet magazines, and local newspapers, and has appeared on or been quoted in media venues such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, CNN, and Al Jazeera.

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[CTyankee]

2. We didn't get this information. We got information on the current budget and projections.

So that is all I am claiming to know at this point.

MY point is that we had certain information that guided our study. Here's what we spend, here's what is the deficit in what we spend and how do we balance it.

We did what we could with the information that was supplied to us. We cut and we taxed, just like our lawmakers do. And, importantly, we talked about the special interests who persuade our lawmakers to vote "their way" to consider other ways that don't benefit the upper class.

Is that too much to ask?

[CTyankee]

3. Sorry, trying to ascertain what your purpose is here. Could you clarifly?

Thanks...

[papadog]

4. No matter how you slice it we spend more than we need.

There is NO REASON we should spend as much as we do on defense other than to protect the "defense industry" and other "special interests". In light of our current economy little can be justified as preserving Americans standard of living since Big Business is taking their profits off shore and leave the American people holding the bag as far as paying taxes are concerned.

SO why do we need to protect the Big Business with the defense industry (paid for by our taxes) when Big Business' contribution to our quality of life is declining?

[CTyankee]

5. That is EXACTLY why we took the scalpel to the tax cuts for the corporations and the rich!

And this is nothing new! We can certainly raise tax rates on the rich and Big Business because we've done it before and it resulted in increased wealth for the general population!

My little contribution on the local level to even the playing field...