Budgeting for and Within the American Defense Forces
Summary
Budgeting is the financial plan indicating how funds are allocated to different organizations. It can be described as the process of balancing the expenses with the organization’s income. The primary purpose of the budget is to monitor and control the organization’s financial goals. It helps the organization to stick to its long-term financial objectives. United States Department of Defense (DOD) is the public organization responsible for coordinating and supervising all national security agencies and the United States Defense Forces. The United States Department of Defense is one of the world’s largest employers, with about 1.3 million active officers, 826,000 armed forces reservists, and 732,000 civilians, which makes the total number of employees close to 2.8 million. Its headquarters are in the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia. The DOD’s primary mission is to provide defense forces needed in war and protect the United States from national security threats.
The United States Department of defense is the highest funded public organization with a budget of about $934 billion in 2020/2021. Social security is the highest funded, followed by the military; this paper will discuss the DOD funds and how they are increasing the United States debt level, and how to solve the problem. To accurately analyze the United States defense departments will be included and analyzed separately. The military budget is used in foreign military operations, homeland security, the department of defense offices, and many other activities. Currently, military funding has become an issue in the public administration; there is a need to reduce its budget since it has caused an increase in the United States debt level. The problem is how DOD spends its funds and how they can save to improve efficiency in their operation.
Analysis
The budgeting is crucial to the United State since the debt level is increasing at the high rate. Despite the high funding to the DOD the American citizens are vulnerable to the environmental and pandemic related threats for example the Covid 19 virus has claimed many lives and still the DOD has remained helpless in that situation. There is a need to evaluate the so called national and social threats. While the DOD budgets takes half of the United States budget most critical issues which threaten the nation security such as environmental, climate and public health are underfunded when in reality they directly affect the low income citizens of United States; this has led to a need to evaluate what is national and social threats and what is not and budget the available funds accordingly.
The government, private sector, professionals and citizens should express their opinions on what best for the United States of America and what they can term as national threat and what is not. They should negotiate on the best way for spending the tax–payers money and also demand for accountability to those responsible. The DOD waste a lot of the taxpayers money on unnecessary projects whereby some of them are overpriced. The annual loss can be estimated to be over $10 billion, this is due to its disclosure nature and lack of congressional and government oversight. In the 2019 the DOD destroyed dysfunctional weapon program which costed $46 billion. These weapons consisted of the high-tech vehicles, Comanche helicopter which has consumed the taxpayers money for a period of 22 years never made it to testing stage and 40-ton Crusader artillery gun which never got to the prototype phase. These projects have cost a lot more than the amount the federal government utilize in Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) for the last five years; this indicates the lack of management effectiveness.
When the USA military forces are boosting of overpriced weapon system programs, whereby some are underperforming or dysfunctional the health sectors officers lacked enough supply of ventilators, respirators, masks and other protective items to respond to Covid 19 pandemic. USA is the leading country with death mortality of more than 190,000and still counting, this shows how unprepared the national security were unprepared to this kind of the threats. Despite the advance warning from Center for Medical Intelligence, and Defense Advanced Research Project Agency to the government the military was unable to prevent the Covid 19 pandemic. Even though USA spends more in its military than collection of the next 10 countries it is the only member in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which lacks universal health care coverage. Approximately 27 million citizens in USA lack health insurance and almost 26 million have lost their jobs between February to May due to layoffs; this has led to undeniable national threat. The government should reconsider their funding for these health sector department and research agencies instead of concentrating on unnecessarily manufacture of weapons.
Despite the huge budget the DOD is considered has the major polluter of the environment. The USA is the highest rated petroleum users and carbon polluters. Between the years 2001 to 2007 the military bases emitted around 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon polluters which is two twice the emission from the public transport vehicles. With no doubt environmental pollution has posted national threats to the citizens for instance for example between 2017 and 2019 there was 44 unusual climate events across USA which caused a damages of about $ 1 billion which has amounted to more than $450 billion. Despite all these damage the government has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement of preventing the global warming. There is no reason the USA government should not invest in the clean energy to prevent carbon emission considering the funds they invest in the worthless projects in DOD.
The USA spend close to $69 billion in the foreign base in reinforcing the DOD in fighting the Islamic terrorist groups and $ 636 billion on the domestic bases. The question is are these foreign bases and idle local bases necessary? Is the USA over spending taxpayers’ money in unnecessary projects? And how does these overconstructed bases benefit the taxpayers? It is clear that USA government is spending a lot of funds in DOD when overlooking other critical sectors such as health sector and environmental sector which would be of greater importance to the taxpayers in comparison to the nuclear weapons, missiles and massive ships laying idle while consuming billions of the taxpayers’ money.
The USA being the super power, it will be hard to cut the DOD budget since they want to appear military strong from their close competitors that is China and Russia. The methods of cutting the costs is through layoffs of the idle man resource, this will pose a challenge of resistance from the citizens since they will be left unemployed. Another challenge is that USA has created a lot of enemies oversees and they cannot afford to be vulnerable since they are main targets of all the Islamic terrorist groups.
From these analysis is clear that the government is not concentrating on the main national threats such as pandemics and environmental factors. The government should go back in the bench and decide how to balance the budgeting to minimize the national threats through funding the critical public sectors which solves problems which directly affects the Citizens.
Recommendations
The DOD should reduce their expenses by cutting the nuclear spending. There is no any good reason for USA to maintain outsized nuclear weapons. For example is there logical reason to maintain 12 fleets of nuclear armed submarines which carry warheads 10 times powerful than bombs used in the world war 11, one of those submarines can weep a dozen cities. According to Kaplan after a thorough evaluation with four star of Strategic Command it was clear that the nuclear arsenal could be reduced by one third without endangering the USA security. USA appends approximately $36billion on the nuclear weapons, which account close to half nine nuclear armed countries that is about $72.9 billion. The DOD can cut those costs and still remain powerful in the entire world, that way will be saving for the most critical needs such as environmental and heath sectors.
The DOD should close the dysfunctional military bases and integrate those which are operational. The DOD is operating with excess of 21% military bases. The total budget spend on the bases amount to $ 636 billion, by cutting a quarter of the base expenditure they can save the money and use it in developing environment friendly technology and also finance medical research to counter the present national threats. They can also lay off the idle man power since they have the highest number of reservists in the world. The army do not need a lot of reservist since the present national threats is not war but biosecurity, cybersecurity and the pandemics. According to Khanna for so long the USA has been spending trillions on conservative security threats issues such as terrorism and international politics overlooking the real nation threats which negatively impacts health, safety and economy and there is a need for new budget to address them.