Conscious Choice: U.S. Defense Spending: One Seriously Chunky Monkey

July 2007

U.S. Defense Spending: One Seriously Chunky Monkey

by Jessie Tierney

What do an upside-down school bus, a stack of Oreo cookies and U.S. military spending have in common? More than you might think.

“Topsy,” a modified school bus created by art car builder Tom Kennedy and commissoned by Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, is making its way across the country this campaign season. Two yellow school buses welded on top of one another rolled across America this May and will be following candidates along the Primary trail this election season. Inscriptions on the outside of the bus inform onlookers, schools and the public, “The U.S. Budget is Topsy-Turvy.”

The Topsy-Turvy bus is part of a larger project called the Priorities Campaign, sponsored by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities and True Majority. These organizations educate and train citizens to “bird-dog” politicians along the campaign trail, and ask very pointed questions to candidates about what they plan to do about defense spending, which, according to a Feb. 2007 Gallup poll, has spun out of control. For the first time since the mid-1990s, a plurality of Americans said that the country was spending “too much” on the military. More telling is that according to an NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll, released on April 26, some 78 percent of Americans believe their country is headed in the wrong direction.

The recent Chalmers Johnson article, Evil Empire, explains the Department of Defense spent a reported $499.6 billion in 2006, but that this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to “defense” spending. The total cost for American “security,” which includes “defense” expenditures for the Departments of Energy, State, Justice, Veterans Affairs, Treasury and NASA, is $934.9 billion! This is larger than the collective sum spent on defense by all other nations, and still does not include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have already surpassed half a trillion dollars.

All this military spending is at the cost of social needs and programs that are desperately suffering. This crisis so moved Cohen that in 2004 he created a flash movie depicting the Pentagon’s defense spending with stacks of Oreo cookies in an attempt to make the issue accessible to everyone. In the movie, an animated Cohen explains the budget expenditures with stacks of Oreos representing the budget. A stack of 40 cookies representing the Pentagon’s annual allocation of $463 billion towers over piles that represent money dedicated for K-12 education (four cookies), child healthcare (four cookies), world hunger (one cookie), Head Start (three-quarters of a cookie) and alternative energy (one-quarter of a cookie).

However, Cohen acknowledges that defense spending has become highly-politicized, and as a result, turned into a sacred cow, where any discussion of cutting is considered both heresy and political suicide. Cohen and his coterie propose that these “cookies” are taken from elements of the budget that are outdated and ineffective.

“A bunch of the candidates have admitted that there is a tremendous waste in the Pentagon and that they would seek to compact that waste,” says Cohen, who is marshalling 8,000 volunteers to go to Iowa and New Hampshire for primary season. Unlike when he started his campaign 10 years ago, the nation seems ready to confront these issues. “People are talking about how the military is so stretched now. It’s beginning to become mainstream.”

The Korb Report: A Realistic Defense for America outlines in detail how the government could shift $60 billion in taxpayer money from obsolete Cold War-era weapons to much-needed initiatives without jeopardizing — and in fact, heightening security.

“Wars of the future,” according to Cohen, “are not going to be against other countries — they’re going to be against guerrillas and terrorists. Nuclear submarines don’t really play a role in that.”

The Sensible Priorities campaign proposes to take that $60 billion (or six cookies) and rebuild schools, eliminate the need for Middle Eastern oil, feed the six million starving children worldwide, provide all children with health insurance and give Head Start to every kid who needs it.

For more information on the Topsy Turvy campaign, visit sensiblepriorities.org/topsy.php. Watch the cookie flash movie at truemajority.org/oreos. To read the entire Korb Report, visit sensiblepriorities.com/pdf/Korb_2007.pdf.

Jessie Tierney is a Chicago-area writer and intern for Conscious Choice.

Click to read the interview with Ben Cohen consciouschoice.com/2007/07/coheninterview0707.html

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