GOVERNMENT MISREPRESENTS MILITARY EXPENSES IN BUDGET

MILITARY SPENDING NOT ENTITLEMENTS LARGEST COMPONENT OF US BUDGET AT NEARLY 40%

In 2001 a Huston, Texas, blue-chip company with interests in energy, natural gas and wood pulp, and known as Enron, was the darling of Wall Street, and touted as "America's most innovative company". Enron employed a staff of 20,000 people world wide, and had a reputed revenue in 2000 of over 100 billion dollars. Yet in that same year it suddenly filed for bankruptcy. The company stock plummeted from $90 dollars a share to pennies in days. The cause of its failure---lies, misrepresentation and accounting fraud. To keep its upscale reputation on Wall Street and remain attractive to investors and to new customers, Enron simply misrepresented its accounts so as to appear more stable and more profitable than it really was. Enron executives moved their less profitable "assets" to shell companies which were "off the books", and kept only its more profitable assets on the record...to deceive its investors and others. Of course such deception is criminal fraud and the company's executives and accountants were eventually tried and convicted as felons.

But similar deceptions are practiced every day by our government. Republicans and Democrats alike mislead the public concerning how our government allocates its funds. Such misrepresentation is just as much fraudulent as Enron's, and should be investigated and prosecuted.

Our government, both political parties, the Congressional budget Office (CBO) and the White House continually misrepresent our military spending. Like Enron they would prefer to present a more congenial set of facts to the voters and to do this, it appears they have decided to lie about the magnitude of government defense spending and its relation to other discretionary and mandated expenses. Our government consistently presents military expenditure so as to make them appear less than they actually are. Such deceptions alter the way citizen/voters perceive our overall spending patterns and have no place in a democracy supposedly "by the people, of the people and for the people". Our government should not deceive us.

In April of 2011 Congress passed the United States government budget for expenditures from September 2010 to October 2011. The document disclosed revenue collection at $2.3 trillion dollars, while total expenditures were $3.6 trillion dollars, and debt payment at @$250 billion dollars. The deficit--the amount of spending which was unfunded and had to be borrowed was listed as $1.56 trillion (or $1.3 trillion). Therefore, in 2011 we were projected to spend more than a trillion dollars that we did not have!

OK, that's what happened, it is not too unusual. We have been running a deficit like that for many years now. But what is important is how these expenditures were represented or misrepresented by our government officials.

In 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a pie chart of U.S. Federal spending for fiscal year 2011. I indicate below how they represented the data in the form of a pie chart. (Follow here a link to site with pie chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png) The multicolored chart represents the total expenditures of $3.6 trillion dollars and how those funds were distributed for fiscal year 2011.

The largest slice of the pie, depicted in bright red, is labeled "Medicare and Medicaid" the category which accounts for $835 billion dollars or 23% of the total. Next largest is Social Security, which at $725 billion dollars accounts for 20% of the total pie. (I must add here that Social Security is not an entitlement and should not be included here. It is an insurance program! A program which actually pays for itself. In fact in the year in question, 2011, the government took in about $800 billion in SS taxes and paid out $725 billion, so it made a "profit" on SS. Social Security seems to be added into the calculations here to "pad the bill", making it appear that the government spends more on entitlements than it actually does and skewing the graph to make Defense appear smaller.). The third largest expenditure in this analysis is "Defense Department", which according to this chart, accounts for 19% of the total disbursements or $700 billion dollars. "Discretionary Spending" accounts for $646 billion dollars or 18% of the total; while "Other Mandatory" costs $465 billion and represents 13% of the pie; finally "Interest On The Debt", is represented as $227 billion dollars, or 6% of the total.

In this pie chart illustration, (referenced above) it is clear what the CBO is implying---that social-safety-net-spending, in the form of Social Security and Medicare /Medicaid make up the largest portion of the pie---for in the CBO analysis, added together they represent a whopping 43% of the budget while Defense is listed as only 19%. This is certainly a misrepresentation. Regarding defense spending, the truth is that Defense is not third down the list at a measly 19% of the total, but number one at about 39% of the total. Te other half of military costs are hidden in the mysterious "Discretionary Spending" and "Other Mandatory" pie slices. That is not a fair or accurate representation of how we spend our tax dollars.

It turns out what the CBO has done with this pie chart is very much what felon Bernie Madoff or convicted Enron executives would have done. To deceive our citizenry, it has shifted much of what is actual (perhaps embarrassingly big) defense spending costs into other categories, just as Enron shifted around it non-profitable assets into shell companies. The real total military spending (see below) is more accurately $1.4 trillion dollars, or closer to double what is represented on the pie chart. If Defense was properly represented on the CBO graphs it would be a biggest red slice of the pie nearly twice as big as it is. A valid pie graph should represent Defense Spending at about 39% of the total-----not 19%. Misrepresenting defense spending is a fraud committed against the people. Such misrepresentation has helped to befuddle the electorate, to misinform and to add to the confusion regarding what is our largest expenditure and where to logically and equitably cut our expenses so we can slowly reduce the annual deficit. In a more valid analysis we spend more on military matters than all other components. Furthermore, if we were to properly remove Social Security from the total "expenditures" since SS actually pays for itself and then some, the graph would be even more obviously skewed toward military spending than it is.

Notes :

See: Center on Conscience and War, True Costs of the Military (http://www.centeronconscience.org/pubs/urgent-action-alerts/45-2011/187-do-you-know-the-true-costs-of-the-military.htm)

Summary:

Military Discretionary Spending @ $775 billion in 2011 (included on chart as Defense Department)

Mandatory Military Spending @$204 billion (placed into "Other" category on chart)

Hidden Military Expenses @$423 billion (not included in Defense Department)

Total: $1.4 trillion

Get the picture?

rjk