Pink Light Over Boeing

Pink Light Over Boeing

Boeing, one of our corporate overlords.

Behold, 2007’s expenditures, estimated. These numbers have gone up several percentage points since then:

Total Purchases: $306,521,269,483

Rank Parent Company Total Air Force Army Navy
1 Lockheed Martin Corp. $27,320,616,068 $13,134,039,297 $4,129,352,342 $9,368,161,063
2 Boeing Co. 20,861,418,122 9,066,016,130 4,571,754,905 5,047,577,486

(click here to continue reading Top 100 Defense Contractors (8/15/07) — GovExec.com.)

And for a little perspective:

Top Ten Miliitary Spending 2009

2009 defense budgets, by nation, showing just the top ten. Notice how much bigger the U.S.’s percentage is…

This is a list of countries by military expenditures. The list is based on the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) database which calculates military expenditures in 2009 (in constant 2008 US$)

Rank↓ ↓ Country↓ Military expenditure, 2009[2]↓ % of GDP, 2008↓
1 United States United States 663,255,000,000 4.3%
2 People's Republic of China China 98,800,000,000 2.0%
3 United Kingdom United Kingdom 69,271,000,000 2.5%
4 France France 67,316,000,000 2.3%
5 Russia Russian Federation 61,000,000,000 3.5%
6 Germany Germany 48,022,000,000 1.3%
7 Japan Japan 46,859,000,000 0.9%
8 Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia 39,257,000,000 8.2%
9 Italy Italy 37,427,000,000 1.7%
10 India India 36,600,000,000 2.6%

 

Even in these lean economic times, the right of Boeing, Lockheed Martin and similar companies to make obscene profits is sacrosanct, and Obama’s 2012 Budget gives Defense a 5% increase. Domestic programs must be sliced to balance the federal budget, but defense contractors remain fat.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates already has revealed the Pentagon will seek $553 billion in its 2012 Pentagon budget plan — the largest request ever — and slower growth than planned over the next four years. He also has revealed proposals to end several major weapons programs, including the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV).

That means the spending plan “will be anti-climactic in the broad sense,” according to one senior House defense aide.

Indeed, while Gates promised to cut $78 billion over five years, most of that reduction would take place in 2014 and 2015. As Center for American Progress senior fellow and President Reagan’s former assistant secretary of defense Larry Korb points out, Obama’s request is “5% higher than what the Defense Department plans to spend this year. In inflation-adjusted dollars, this figure is higher than at any time during the Bush years or during the Cold War.” In fact, the total military budget this year “comes in at a thumping $750 billion — an annual tax of more than $7,000 on every household in the country.” And while there are clear ways to cut $1 trillion from the Pentagon budget, it seems that many in the GOP have no intention of doing so.

(click here to continue reading ThinkProgress » Pentagon’s 2012 Spending Proposal Is ‘The Largest Request Ever’ Since World War II.)

These are only the budgeted amounts, the Pentagon manages to go over budget nearly every year since General Eisenhower was in office.

So are you willing to give $7,000 to the military this year? and more the year after? and more the year after that?

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