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When President Obama recently gave a speech on deficit reduction, he announced $400 billion in cuts to current and future military spending. While that certainly sounds like a lot of money, analysts scrutinizing the numbers are having a hard time finding evidence to back it up. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had announced spending cuts to specific programs several times over the past year, including canceling certain weapons programs. In 2010 for example, he announced a savings of $100 billion through “efficiency.” However, he was clear about reinvesting those savings right back into the Pentagon budget. Earlier this year he announced $78 billion in cuts over 5 years. But that still leaves $322 billion of unaccounted for cuts as per President Obama’s recent savings claim. Secretary Gates has made no announcement of that level of cuts in spending, simply replacing several military programs with new ones. In fact, under President Obama, the U.S. military budget has seen a huge overall increase of nearly 50% compared to the 1992-2001 decade, and a significantly larger budget than under President Bush. Part of the $550 billion budget – which does not even include the $118 billion budget for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – are a planned $50 million military gym to be built in San Diego, and a $5 million “working dog” center. Every American tax payer pays an average of $2700 in taxes each year toward the defense department budget. On a global scale, the U.S. spends as much on its military as the rest of the world combined. The good news is that in this time of fiscal crisis, even members of Congress are finally beginning to address the sacred cow of federal spending on defense.

GUEST: Gareth Porter, investigative journalist and historian specializing in U.S. national security policy

Read Gareth Porter’s article here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/22-0