A Little Hocus Pocus

We all know how it goes at the local market. One day a product you frequently purchase announces in big gaudy lettering, "New & Improved" and/or "Lower Price." In either case, after examining the packaging, you quickly realize that the package is smaller -- It weighs several ounces less and/or includes less volume of product.

If it touts itself as having a "lower price," you understand instinctively that you are receiving less. If you did a calculation in your head, you also realize that, while the outlay of your funds may be less than before, you are now paying more per ounce or per item. So, in reality, you are paying more for less.

If the product merely advertises that it is "New & Improved," it usually means 1 of 2 things: a) The product costs the same as before, but the size, weight or volume is less; or b) The size, weight or volume remains the same, but the price of the product has gone up and sometimes this increase is significant.

I have brought up these examples of the games producers of food (and general consumer) products play with the rest of us in light of an article by Gareth Porter, "The Obama-Gates Maneuver on Military Spending." It appears the Obama administration is trying to play this same sort of game with American voters in relation to the military-industrial complex budgetary process.

The original Obama-Gates base military spending plan – spending excluding the costs of the current wars – for FY 2011 through 2020, called for spending $5.8 trillion, or $580 billion annually, as former Pentagon official Lawrence Korb noted last January. That would have represented a 25 percent real increase over the average annual level of military spending, excluding war costs, by the George W. Bush administration.

Even more dramatic, the Obama-Gates plan was 45 percent higher than the annual average of military spending level in the 1992-2001 decade, as reflected in official DOD data (pdf)...

After increasing defense spending by a significant amount, Obama recently has suggested that he and his Secretary of Defense will look for ways to trim $400 billion from the budget for the same period. While Porter contends that most of these proposed savings may well come from accounting tricks, even if the long-range budget does include an actual $400 billions in savings, it concurrently will represent an overall increase.

The reason for this chicanery is more than obvious. Obama wants to receive public plaudits for reducing defense spending while, at the same time, he's doing nothing of the sort! Put another way, it is beltway politics as usual. (sigh)