Many have noted the President’s proposal to add some $48 billion to next year’s defense budget. Not many have objected to this proposal because it comes right after 9/11 and in particular right after the President’s decision to wage a new War on Terrorism. For it is readily thought that this War, like the earlier War on Communism, will not come cheap.  Just how much should we be spending on defense? Are there any rational limits? At the present time, even before the proposed increase, the U.S. spends more each year on the military than the next nine largest national defence budgets combined. Although spectacular this fact is not surprising when we realize that the U.S. navy alone outfits and maintains 12 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Rational limits? Not in regard to our presence on the seas.
We should be asking ourselves whether we really need the additional $48 billion in defense expenditures. Furthermore we ought to ask ourselves, might we not wage an even more effective war on terrorism by redirecting some of our current defense spending? By changing our defense posture before the new enemy? How many terrorists, for example, will be stopped and brought to justice by any one of our 12 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers? It’s the other way around. The carriers become targets of the terrorists and we have to invest even more in their defense.
And there are better ways for us to defend ourselves. In an article in the current Nation magazine former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern says the following about the President’s proposal: “Instead of adding $48 billion to the Pentagon budget,…  wouldn’t we make the world a more stable, secure place if we invested half of that sum in reducing poverty, ignorance, hunger and disease in the world?” McGovern is right to question how we might most effectively use an additional $24 billion. Also it may very well be that by reducing poverty, ignorance, hunger and disease in the world we would thereby do more to reduce the threat of terrorism than by increasing our spending for the military, let alone the good in itself that would result.  However, there’s no way that the Congress of the United States is going to allow that amount of money to go overseas, into the hands of people who will do nothing to assure that the current members of Congress be returned to office at the time of the next election. If ever it were taken from the defense budget that amount of money would have to be redirected to projects within the congressmen’s own districts. It was probably this kind of extravagant thinking that accounted more than anything else for McGovern’s loss to Richard Nixon in 1972. Then he proposed a guaranteed annual income for each American family.
So what should we do with the money from the President’s proposed increase in defense spending if it could be redirected?  In a word, education. Why, even our politicians would become “education presidents,” “education congressmen.” Whether or not they understand what this means, they know that it’s what they need after their name, along with health care sponsorships and job protection programs, if they would get reelected. For who would deny that there is any one attribute more important than the educational attainment of its citizenry among those attributes and qualities that make up the strength of a nation? Furthermore, who would deny that the most important education of all is that which occurs during the first five years of life? Therefore, for the very best defense of our nation, shouldn’t that $24 or $48 billion that we are ready to release, be directed to the end of high quality preschool care for all children in order that, as Marian Wright Edelman has been advocating for years, no child be left behind?
Now only a fraction of the preschool children in this country are being fully served by day care providers, most of all for the reason that child care is expensive. Full day care easily costs from $4,000 to $10,000 per child per year.  Currently the United States is spending some $6 billion for child care, mostly in the form of Head Start programs. (Compare this with the current Defense budget of $330 billion.)The Head Start programs reach nearly 1 million children, up from a few hundred thousand during the presidency of Richard Nixon, and they serve a little more than half of the eligible children. And there are many more families, working families not eligible for Head Start, who still need help with child care. In addition to the million and one half children who are eligible for Head Start programs there are probably twice as many more whose parents need help with the costs of child care. That makes some 4.5 million children. Head Start costs are about $6,000 per child, and in many instances Head Start is not doing the job. Put the cost per child at the upper end, some $10,000 per child, and then what would it cost our government to fund this “child care for all?” Do the math. It comes to some $45 billion, not even the amount that the President is asking for the military. If our President were really interested in defending our country, why wouldn’t he propose to spend the additional funds, that evidently are available, for child care? I’m reminded of President Eisenhower’s admonition to his fellow Americans at the end of his presidency in 1961, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Well, we’ve let our guard down and aircraft carriers have usurped the special place that our children ought to have in our lives and in the life of our country.

Apr 12, 2002