Southern Pork

Even with the economy reeling, conservatives in Congress are demanding a boost in military spending; confirming once again that the largest special interest group in Washington is the Department of Defense.

Republicans use patriotism and fear to bludgeon Democrats into supporting bigger and bigger defense expenditures. Southern senators –including the Democrat’s Blue Dogs --view military spending as a jobs program.

They want to devote tens of billions of the stimulus package to the military. “If bridges need fixing, so too do the tools with which our military fights,” wrote a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

U.S. military spending is close to $1 trillion a year. No other nation spends even one-tenth as much. The costs for our war machine equal the military spending of the globe combined. You could put together the next 13 largest navies and ours would still be larger. Not to mention that 11 of those navies are our allies.

And do we really need military bases all over the world?

Military spending increased 60% since George W took office in 2001, not including the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he kept off the books.

At a press conference earlier this month, President Obama took aim at the Pentagon when he said “we are spending money on things that we don’t need, and we are paying more than we need to pay.”

DOD is legendary for its cost overruns. A 2008 GAO report showed that from 2000-07 the cost of major new defense programs had grown some $300 billion over original estimates. Army Times notes the typical defense system was 26% over budget and 21 months behind schedule, but its Tim Geithner the GOP hawks scream at for wasting taxpayer dollars.

The amount we waste on unnecessary weapons systems would pave miles of highways and build thousands of new classrooms. We’ve spent zillions on missile systems that in tests are successful only 50% of the time even when we know the exact flight path of the missile.

Some make the point that lavish new weapons systems aren’t needed to fight a foe that has relied on box-cutters for its most destructive attack.

But you won’t hear that from Republicans in Congress. They prefer to rant and rail about money Democrats want to spend to provide every American with health care. As Rep. Joe Barton of Texas put it before Obama’s healthcare summit: “Not all of the Democrats’ ideas are objectionable. Just nearly all.”

Stuck in their ideology

With medical bills bankrupting one American every 30 seconds, strangling business and wrecking family budgets, the cry for healthcare reform is heard loud and clear coast to coast.

On the east coast, here is President Obama speaking to a joint session of Congress: “The cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt—healthcare reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.”

On the West Coast, here is an exasperated Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger venting to the world at large: “You’ve got to listen to the people. If the nation is screaming out loud: ‘We need healthcare reform’. ‘We want to have universal care’. ‘We want to have everyone insured’. ‘We want to bring the costs down’. ‘We want everyone to have access.’ I mean, that’s what they want; that’s what you do. So you’ve got to do what the people want you to do rather than getting stuck in your ideology.”

And of course here’s the response from GOP House Minority Leader John (stuck in his ideology) Boehner: “We can’t have a health system run by the government.”

Why not?

That’s what the rest of the industrialized world has and they spend half what we do for health care and they cover everyone while our system leaves nearly 50 million Americans with no coverage and millions more underinsured.

President Obama has made healthcare his top fiscal priority, linking health reform to a strong economy: “There are some people who are making the argument that we can’t do anything about health care because the economy comes first. They don’t understand that health care is the biggest component of our economy and, when it’s broken, that affects everything.”

That view is shared by America’s Agenda: Health Care for All, a non-profit organization of labor and business leaders created to support statewide healthcare reform campaigns. Their efforts over the past several years have produced useful models for national reform legislation.

America’s Agenda is sponsoring a series of “Summit Conversations” designed to highlight the emerging national consensus on key components of a 21st century healthcare system. The first Summit was held Feb. 28 at the University of Miami, hosted by President Donna Shalala. An impressive panel of experts agreed we can’t have economic recovery without reforming health care.

“This will sink the economy permanently if we don’t solve it now,” said Billy Tauzin, CEO of PhRMA.

“We’re going to lose our entire auto industry,” said former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt.

Doug Dority, president of America’s Agenda and former head of the United Food & Commercial Workers, put the issue in perspective for the people he used to argue with across the bargaining table: “No employer can sustain a double-digit growth in healthcare costs year after year after year. The system we have is destined to collapse.”

This week when President Obama invited leaders of both parties to a White House Summit on Health Care, talks of compromise were drowned out by rampant ideology. Obama is proposing a solution that gives Americans the choice of keeping their existing insurance plan or enrolling in a new public option. That’s a no-no for conservatives. The very notion of government competing with private insurers drives them crazy. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s willing to work with Democrats but “no public option” was where he drew his ideological line in the sand.

Further roiling the ideological waters is a new multimillion dollar ad campaign against government-run health care launched by Conservatives for Patients Rights. This group is headed by Richard Scott who obviously knows something about the cause of soaring healthcare costs. In 1997 he was forced to resign as CEO of HCA after a federal investigation of Medicare fraud resulted in $1.7 billion in fines.

Among the potential areas of compromise, this could be one:

President Obama put $20 billion in his stimulus package to improve health information technology. Efficiency alone will save money and save lives. If Congress is looking for an IT model, look no further than the Veterans Administration. Veterans who become ill while away from home can go into any VA hospital in the country and doctors electronically can pull up their medical records and know how to treat them.

VA, of course, is government-run.