03/01/11 – Chris Hellman – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
Now, in the past, the Independent Institute, actually the great Robert Higgs at the Independent Institute, has, along, well separately, but incidentally with the people that did shock and audit the big study over at Mother Jones Magazine, they each separately calculated the American national security military budget at a trillion dollars a year.
And then, of course, Dr. Ron Paul was always citing Robert Higgs and the Independent Institute and a website called PolitiFact did a big fact check and they did some arithmetic and they said, gee, yeah, trillion dollars, that's a lot.
Well, our next guest on the show, Christopher Hellman, says you're lowballing it.
He did the math and he got a number higher than that.
Welcome to the show.
How's it going?
It's going well.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
One point two trillion dollars a year.
Say it ain't so.
Yeah, one point two trillion.
And in truth, that's what we know of.
There's probably more out there that I just haven't been smart enough to find.
Well, yeah, I mean, they even admit that they're huge black budgets, but they don't tell us what's in them.
Yeah, that and because you don't know exactly where the black budget lies, it's hard to know whether you've counted it or not.
I mean, I suspect that a good portion of the black budget is already counted when you look at the Department of Defense number.
But since it's black, we're only guessing.
Yeah.
Well, and when they say black budget, that means that in many of these cases, even the so-called what gang of eight or whatever don't know about the leadership of both parties in both houses don't even know about it.
I suspect that there's a portion where that's true.
And there's also a portion that they do know it.
You know, a lot of what the what we do in the name of national security occurs at different levels, you know, of clearance.
So there's some that I'm sure they do know of.
And I suspect you're right that there's a portion that they've never seen and and is not documented in any way.
Well, you know, I don't really know about the balance of power inside the bureaucracy now, but you may remember that great Seymour Hersh piece called preparing the battlefield.
And in fact, the coming wars before that, where he talked about how, especially under Rumsfeld, but also under Gates, inside the government, they had worked basically the military had worked to seize more and more of the covert activity from the CIA and do it under military auspices.
And the main reason being the freedom of action and not having to be accountable to the House and Senate intelligence committees, or at least even their heads of the intelligence committees, like the CIA is whenever there's an official finding and the Congress has to appropriate the money, etc.
But the Pentagon can do it by just reaching in a giant slush fund honeypot and spend money on whatever they want.
They don't have to explain to Congress what they're doing.
And like you're saying, this could be and in many cases, apparently is at the very highest level of American government activity in other people's countries.
Yeah, I mean, meaning killing people.
One of the things, but just regardless of what they're doing with the money, one of the things that we, you know, we do know from organizations that have charted the black budget, and I'm not one of them, but there are people who do attempt to estimate, you know, the size of the black budget on an annual basis, and they and they saw it growing under Rumsfeld.
And one assumes that, you know, that either we've expanded the use of class, what what ought to be classified, and you have to wonder why.
And there's almost, there's a high degree of certainty in my part, that part of the reason that you expand the description of classification, you know, top secret or whatever, is to avoid the paper trail on on programs that not not because they ought to be secure, but because they're they're poorly administered programs or poorly, you know, giving poor return on taxpayers dollars and and you can take it out, you know, removed from the scrutiny of Congress, which, you know, one can argue how effective they are in their oversight function, I think on some, they're good and some, they're bad, but but when they don't get a chance to do it at all, you know, that's, that's, that's the real problem.
Yeah, well, there's so much secrecy.
And so many layers of secrecy on and on so many different areas in which our government is acting.
It's, you know, we all might as well be Sean Hannity fans or something for as far as how well we're able to really get our head around the reality of what our government is and what it's doing.
There's so much secrecy, we don't even know it's one of those unknown unknowns that Don Rumsfeld used to talk about, right?
I think that's true.
But I think it's also useful to look at it the other way, which is that compared to a lot of countries, we have a very high degree of transparency and what the what the federal budget does.
One of the points that I like to make when I, you know, when I when I talk in public, is that the work that I do analyzing my nation's military budget, not only would be impossible in other countries, because they just don't put the information out there.
In certain countries, it would probably get me killed.
Just because, you know, these are militaries that don't like people looking at them all that closely.
So while I'm sure that there are huge gaps in our knowledge, I think we're fortunate that we do have the level of transparency within our within what our government does that we do have.
And, and yeah, we ought to push for more.
But recognize, you know, we've got a head start on on the majority of nations in the world.
Right?
Although, the thing is, there is sort of the difference between, you know, the comparative amount of information versus just the total adding it up, because of course, the US Empire spends as much as the entire rest of the world combined on military and does many more things.
In fact, most of what they're keeping secret from us is the amount of support that they give to the people who rule those countries where you're not allowed to publish such things at all that you're referring to.
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's absolutely true.
So, you know, and that's one of the things that national priorities think is important is, you know, increasing the level of transparency within the federal budget across the spectrum, not just not just within the military, because there are different kinds of transparency, there's, there's the kind that involves, you know, the classification of documents, secret, top secret, that kind of thing.
But then there's the practical transparency, which is, you know, we have these huge volumes of data about what happens with taxpayers dollars out there, but it's, it's, it's to, you know, the average person who doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about these things, it's gibberish.
And, you know, we at NPP think that, you know, that that word transparency is important to which is you have, the government has to tell us what it is they're doing on our behalf in a manner that makes sense to us.
So that's, that's another important component.
That's that that was the really the basis of this article was, let's look at what we do know, and identify what we don't know, and talk a little bit more about what we do know, and in a way that that that expands our understanding of what security means in this country, because it's not just the money that goes into the Pentagon.
It's a lot of other things as well.
And that the the commitment we make, when we want to, you know, support one of the largest militaries in the world is well beyond what what they spend in the five sided building on the Potomac.
All right, well, so I want to go through some of the mathematics, if we can in the next segment.
But before we go out to this next break, maybe you can sort of give us a little bit of a general rundown on what all we are talking about other than just the Pentagon.
Well, obviously, that's an important component, then we're looking at things like benefits that we'll pay for, you know, our our veterans who who serve their country.
We're generating huge numbers of veterans right now, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are and they're going to require, you know, our support, our financial support for decades to come.
That's an important one.
Then there's homeland security, there's intelligence, there's, there's just a litany of things that that are direct result of our having one of the largest militaries in the world.
You know, I saw this headline this morning up on TV, the bottom of the news crawl thing at the bottom of the screen there.
So I didn't really have a chance to look into it.
But there was something about a GAO report is saying that they waste a half a trillion dollars a year just on redundant projects.
And this isn't just the national security state, I guess this includes housing and urban development and the food, whatever.
But they're saying half a trillion dollars a year in all these companies, all these agencies doing the same work.
And it reminded me of that the top secret America thing they did in the Washington Post, Priest and Arkin there, where the government has no idea even what it's doing.
They generate so many reports, like just on terrorism, for example, nobody even reads them anymore.
Like nobody even knows what's going on.
Yeah, you know, I mean, the series you're talking about in the post was was really dramatic in that regard.
I mean, one of the points I like to make is the Pentagon has not never has and cannot pass an audit.
We don't know how they spend the money that we give them.
And that's, that's important to know.
Yeah.
All right, everybody.
It's Christopher Hellman from the National Priorities Project.
That's NationalPriorities.org.
We're talking about the one point two trillion dollar defense budget.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
Talking with Chris Hellman from the National Priorities Project.
And he's got this new piece at TomDispatch.com.
It'll be running at Antiwar.com tomorrow.
Chris Hellman, one point two trillion dollars for national security.
And this is the part of the interview, Christopher, where I get to do my gag that I learned one time, I think in junior college or something.
Let's see, a million seconds is about a week and a half and a billion seconds is like 32 years, somewhere around there.
And then a trillion seconds then is more than 30,000 years worth of seconds is one trillion dollars.
Yeah.
When I, when I, when I talk to people about a trillion, one of the things I like to do is quote that figure, which is if I was to hand you a dollar bill every second, you know, a silver dollar every second, it would take me 32,000 years to hand you a trillion dollars.
Not that you'd be able to hold it because that'd be a really nice way to do it with silver.
That way they'd still be worth a dollar 30,000 exactly.
And, and, but you'd never be able to hold it because it weighs like, you know, 30,000 tons or some ungodly amount like that.
It's, it's, it's, it's a lot of money.
I mean, if you earned a million dollars a year, not only would you be one of the wealthiest Americans out there it would still take you a million years to earn a trillion dollars.
So it's a big number.
And this is the era of the $4 trillion budgets.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But even in the context of $4 trillion budget and, and the administration is proposing spending 3.7 trillion next year of that 3.7, roughly a third is, is, you know, related, um, by, uh, based on our analysis is related, uh, to, uh, supporting the U S military.
Uh, that's, that's, that's a lot of, that's a lot of change.
All right.
Now in this article, you really break it down again.
Everybody, it's at tomdispatch.com 1.2 trillion for national security.
Could you please, uh, just kind of take us through the arithmetic.
We still got, you know, almost 10 minutes, so take your time and feel free to elaborate.
Well, um, again, we talked a little bit about this before the break.
Um, we're going to spend about $140 billion next year providing benefits for, um, uh, our, our war vets.
Uh, a lot of this is healthcare.
Um, and that number is going to go up.
Uh, it's going to go up very fast according to the congressional budget office, which is Congress's auditing branch.
Uh, that number could go up between 45 and 75% over the next, uh, decade.
And, and the reason for that isn't the fact that we're creating more vets.
Um, although we are, uh, the vet, the VA has the same problem that you and I do.
Healthcare costs are, are, are spiraling.
Uh, so, you know, that number as large as it is, is going to be getting larger and it's going to be getting larger in a hurry.
Uh, so that's a, you know, that's a, that's a low figure that, that, uh, that, that, that, that 140 billion.
Um, the other portion of that for vets is, is housing benefits, educational benefits, things like that, that are incentives to get people to enlist.
We promise them when they leave the military that, that we'll provide them with certain, um, services and opportunities.
Um, and, and so that accounts for a portion of that.
Um, the other thing we looked at, and this is a little bit harder to get your, your head around is, um, uh, the government, the Department of Defense, um, employs, uh, a lot of people, um, and you have to pay them.
And, uh, you pay them through the Department of Defense budget, but you also pay them once they retire.
They're, they're, they're federal government, you know, retirees just like anybody else, whether they work for Department of Agriculture or Treasury.
Um, and you have to pay the, the pension benefits of, of, of those people.
Uh, you have to pay the pension benefits of military retirees who are slightly different than veterans.
Uh, they're, they're, um, millions of men and women who served in the military who are not veterans of actual military, you know, combat services, but they are retirees and, and they are entitled to benefits as well.
Uh, so that's a, that's a, another large chunk of change.
Um, and, uh, you know, these are, these are costs that, again, they're a direct result of what it is that we, uh, you know, the, um, and those, those two pots of money are both in the sort of $50 billion range each.
Um, and, and they're a result of the fact that, that we, you know, employ and support, uh, over one and a half, roughly one and a half million men and women in uniform.
Uh, and they need, you know, that kind of logistical support and, and benefits once they leave government service.
There's, uh, there are numbers related to, uh, the functions of the state department, some of which are directly, um, a component of the war on terrorism.
One of the things that's happening this year, uh, within the state department's budget is they're actually separating out, uh, the money that's related to, um, uh, what they call the war on terrorism.
Um, and that, which is, and the other pot of money, which is their basic state department function.
Uh, the, the basic state department functions about $50 billion, and then there's about seven or $8 billion that they say contributes directly to what's going on, particularly in, in, um, Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan and a little bit in Iraq.
And, uh, you know, that, that is supporting, um, the non-combat, uh, portion of the war on terrorism, but clearly it's, it's part of our security spending.
I also think that- Do you guys happen to break down how much of the state department budget still goes to mercenaries?
Uh, I don't, I don't have figures for that.
We look at, um, just overall figures supplied to us by the office of management and budget.
They don't, they don't break it down that far.
Um, there are, I'm sure that there are studies on there, out there.
Um, every year or so, uh, either the general, uh, general government accountability office, um, or the congressional budget office, that's an estimate of the number of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's a number of real concern, uh, to members of Congress who see, um, the increasing outsourcing of, of our security function as being problematic, not just from a budgetary standpoint, but actually who's given the orders out there kind of thing.
Uh, so it is tracked, but it's not tracked.
Um, it's not tracked within, uh, the budget function that we looked at.
Let's talk about H-bombs.
How much do they spend making and maintaining H-bombs?
Well, we don't make H-bombs anymore.
What we do is we, um, we try and maintain the reliability is, is the jargon that the Department of Energy uses.
And, um, we also spend a huge amount of money cleaning up, um, the mess we made, um, over the last five decades building nuclear weapons.
Uh, the nuclear weapons request this year for cleanup and what they call stockpile stewardship, which is overseeing the quality of our nuclear weapons.
Um, and also some money that we spend on dismantling because our nuclear arsenal is getting smaller.
And when it does, we, we, we take some of them apart.
Um, that's going to be about $18 billion in the coming year.
Wow.
That is a lot.
Well, you know, I talked with a guy from the Los Alamos study group, which is, I guess, the anti-nuclear everything guys.
And, uh, they were talking about, well, and I guess it was riders to the start treaty.
So maybe this stuff didn't get passed independently, but they wanted billions and billions of dollars for new H-bomb factories and everything.
Yeah.
And, uh, what they're doing, and this is, this is, this was sort of the devil's deal that the arms control people made in order to get the start was the, was that conservatives in Congress.
Um, right now our policy is we're not building new warheads.
The Obama administration has been very clear about this.
We're not building new warheads.
We're not testing new warheads.
We're not doing any of that stuff.
Um, but, but, but conservatives in Congress, uh, who like nuclear weapons, who, um, because it makes them feel good when they go to bed at night.
Um, they, they feel safer that way.
What is the matter with those people?
Well, they, they have a less optimistic worldview than you and I do.
Uh, they, I mean, mine is not so optimistic, but I can't see how fusing hydrogen atoms together in the presence of women and children is good for anything.
No, it's there.
That's the old poster, which is, you know, from, from the sixties, which is nuclear war is bad for, you know, that's for your health, everything that you care about everything.
But the point, the point was, was that in order to get this, uh, they wanted to see, um, a nuclear weapons complex infrastructure that, um, was updated significantly.
And so in order to get ratification for start, uh, they got a commitment from the Obama administration.
I don't have the dollar figures here because it's not an annual figure.
It's, it's over a decade.
Um, uh, but a significant, uh, sum of money was, was put on the table to upgrade, uh, the nuclear weapons complex.
And the concern is, and I think it's a legitimate one, is that while the Obama administration has pledged that they're not interested in developing new generations of nuclear weapons, um, what they're doing is creating the capability for future administrations.
And, uh, you know, to put your trust in who the next president of the United States is going to be, that doesn't make me, uh, you know, very comfortable.
So I, you know, the Los Alamos people, um, they're what we call down, you know, what, what people refer to as downwinders, they live right next door and they care about this very deeply and are very committed and very thorough in their analysis.
Um, and if they're nervous, I'm, I'm inclined to be nervous as well.
Yeah.
Uh, I'll go with that.
All right.
So, uh, real quick here at the end, can you tell us, uh, just kind of round numbers, how much we pay for this, uh, for the department of Homeland security?
Yeah.
Um, Homeland security, um, uh, prior to nine 11 attacks was about, uh, department didn't even exist at that point, but we were spending about 16 billion.
Uh, we're now going to spend about 75 billion on Homeland security this year.
So it's, it's a huge pot of money and it's growing quickly.
Yeah.
Well, and just think what that means too.
It means further inroads into all your local police departments is really what, where all that money's going.
All right.
Well, listen, thanks very much.
I really appreciate your effort and your time on the show today, Chris.
Anytime.
My pleasure.
Everybody.
That's Christopher Hellman from the national priorities project, Tom dispatch.com for the new one.