Military spending is not right way to boost America's economic security

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That Washington is holding defense cuts responsible for slow economic growth is a specious argument at best. War spending is unproductive and inflationary. Modern defense costs are capital intensive, not labor intensive, making the industry inefficient as a job creator.  

The defense industry has a presence in congressional districts across this country, so cuts affect every member. But every district in the U.S. has pressing infrastructure, education, health and environmental needs, and the return on the taxpayer’s dollar is much higher when invested on these areas.

Instead of concentrating money on capital intensive, military hardware purposed for destruction, and causing long term economic drain, our very limited and valuable economic resources should be invested in building the true strength and capacity of our economy, our nation, and her people.

In prioritizing military spending, Congress is cutting the very programs that can actually strengthen our economy.

During the heightened banking crisis in 2009, Rep. James Oberstar, then Chair of House Transportation Committee, called for a massive Eisenhower-level of investment in transportation infrastructure. He was right.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the U.S. requires $3.6 trillion in infrastructure investment by 2020 to bring our grade D+ standards to safe standards.  

This is exactly what we need: to put bridge-builders to work rather than funding technology and personnel to destroy bridges, and to take tank-making factories and repurpose them to build high-speed trains.

In prioritizing military spending, Congress is cutting the very programs that can actually strengthen our economy: Cutting federal assistance to the states, forcing them to lay off teachers, firefighters, and social workers; cutting opportunities for job creation, training, and placement programs; and eviscerating funding for children’s programs and assistance for seniors.

These actions make no economic sense. 

Military spending generates fewer jobs per billion dollars spent than many other kinds of investments:  For every 100 jobs created by Pentagon spending, the same investment would create 251 jobs in education, 169 jobs in health care, or 147 jobs in clean energy.  

Conversely, every $1 billion cut in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program means 13,718 jobs lost. Many teachers, social workers, first responders, and other government workers have already lost their jobs from the $1.5 trillion in spending cuts since 2010.  

Even if $1 trillion were to be cut from the military budget over the next 10 years, America would still be spending at the peak levels of the Vietnam War and the Cold War. It is time to gather our senses.

In order to facilitate economic growth and development in America, defense spending is the wrong bellwether.  America's increasing number of military expeditions abroad, in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, has undermined the long-term stability of our economy at home. It has neither resulted in an economically vibrant, healthy, and well-educated nation, nor has it made us safer.

Both our progressive and conservative representatives should be joining forces, restraining waste and investing wisely. The key is to conserve, as a good housekeeper would, and invest in that which supports the family and home -- our nation and people.

It is time for our representatives and the Obama administration to seriously address the nature of the structural reforms that need to take place in order for our economy to get back on track.

We understand that the nation cannot spend its way out of this current economic crisis, in the same way that it cannot save or tax its way out. 

Congress needs to address the cyclical nature of our debt-based monetary system, which perpetuates inflation and crashes, and reform it meaningfully while massively cutting wasteful spending and, instead, investing in necessary infrastructure improvements that will create millions of productive jobs – all of which will help improve America’s health, education and prosperity.

Michael Shank is director of foreign policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Elizabeth Kucinich was a framer of 112th congress' HR 2990, the National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act.

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After Georgia cheating scandal, could school choice finally be the right answer?

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My first question after reading about seven teachers in an Atlanta, Ga., public school accused of altering standardized test scores to make it appear students performed better than they actually did was: How could they!?

The seven were nicknamed "the chosen" and, according to Georgia state investigator Richard Hyde, the less than magnificent seven sat in a locked room without windows, erasing wrong answers and inserting correct ones. It's one thing for a child to cheat on a test; it's quite another for teachers to do it.

Compounding the cheating scandal is that the children in this elementary school are mostly poor and African-American. How are they helped to develop a moral sense, not to mention an academic foundation that will lift them out of poverty, if they get the message that cheating is better than achieving?

Public school children are subject to all manner of manipulation and disservice by people charged with educating them.

According to The New York Times, the scandal goes beyond cheating. Retired district superintendent Beverly L. Hall is among 35 Atlanta educators indicted by a Fulton County grand jury. Dr. Hall was charged with "racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements." Hall reportedly earned more than $500,000 in performance bonuses. She faces up to 45 years in prison.

Dr. Hall has received considerable recognition for her achievements, which later turned out to be counterfeit. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan invited her to the White House. 

In 2009, The American Association of School Administrators named her Superintendent of the Year. 

It was a case of something being too good to check. Who doesn't want to see poor and minority children succeed in school? It appears these teachers cared more about themselves than the children.

Even the reliably liberal and pro-public school columnist Eugene Robinson is disturbed. Writing in The Washington Post, Robinson says, "It is time to acknowledge that the fashionable theory of school reform -- requiring that pay and job security for teachers, principals and administrators depend on their students' standardized test scores -- is at best a well-intentioned mistake, and at worst nothing but a racket."

Robinson quotes Post education reporter Valerie Strauss, who has written that while there have been "dozens" of allegations of cheating around the country, "only Atlanta's has been aggressively and thoroughly investigated." Strauss wrote, "We don't really know" how widespread the problem might be. 

Isn't it long past time to find out?

The problem is that a monopoly always protects itself. The teachers' unions and many Democratic politicians, who receive their campaign contributions, oppose school choice, which would improve not only public schools, but also the chances of poor and minority children to have a better life. 

The current approach appears to be to keep disadvantaged children in underperforming schools so that underperforming teachers keep their jobs and the politicians they support keep theirs. As long as the monopoly survives, we can expect more cheating and corner-cutting and less real achievement for children who ought to be everyone's first concern.

Instead, as Atlanta would suggest, public school children are subject to all manner of manipulation and disservice by people charged with educating them. Perhaps if parents had the freedom to send their children to a school they believed would offer them a better shot at true success they would fare better. Could school choice be the answer?

Indiana thinks so. Last week, the state's Supreme Court upheld a voucher program that gives poor and middle-class families access to tax dollars to help them pay private school tuition. Parents should decide where their children go to school.

It's not the children who cannot achieve. It's the system that fails them. "Our schools desperately need to be fixed," writes Robinson. "But creating a situation in which teachers are more likely than students to cheat cannot be the right path. ... Students are not widgets. I totally reject the idea that students from underprivileged neighborhoods cannot learn. Of course they can."

Authorities should pursue investigations of alleged cheating by teachers and school administrators. Meanwhile, for this and many other reasons, the school choice movement is gaining strength. It is seen by increasing numbers of Americans as the best way to prevent cheating children out of the decent education they deserve.

Cal Thomas is America's most widely syndicated newspaper columnist and a Fox News contributor. Follow him on Twitter@CalThomas. Readers may e-mail Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.

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Boehner: No US debt crisis right now, but it's on the horizon

Published March 17, 2013

FoxNews.com

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  FILE: Dec. 13, 2012: House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, accuses President Obama of not being serious about cutting government spending during a news conference on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C.AP

House Speaker John Boehner broke from most Republicans on Sunday when he agreed with President Obama and other Democrats who say the country does not have an immediate debt crisis.

“We do not have an immediate debt crisis,” the Ohio Republican said on ABC’s “This Week.”

However, Boehner said such a crisis is on the horizon and disagreed with Obama about the need to fix the problem now.

“We have one looming because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form. They’re going to go bankrupt,” he said. “I would argue that we do need to do something.”

His comments were backed up by fellow House Republican Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee.

“We do not have a debt issue right now, but we see it coming. So let’s get ahead of this crisis,” the Wisconsin congressman told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Ryan also said he thinks the president is ignoring the fact that the country has a looming problem.

“He knows we have a debt crisis coming,” Ryan said.

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker told “Fox News Sunday” earlier in the morning that he was “disappointed” and “disheartened” that Democrats are “acting as if the deficit issue is not that important.”

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Is Ann Coulter right -- are Libertarians wimps ...or worse?

Last week, Conservative pundit Ann Coulter told me and a thousand young libertarians that we libertarians are puss*** -- well, she used slang for a female body part.

We were in Washington, D.C., at the Students for Liberty conference, taping my Fox Business show, and she didn’t like my questions about her opposition to gay marriage and drug legalization.

“We’re living in a country that is 70 percent socialist,” she says. “The government takes 60 percent of your money. They take care of your health care, your pensions ... who you can hire ... and you (libertarians) want to suck up to your little liberal friends and say, oh, we want to legalize pot? ... If you were a little more manly, you’d tell liberals what your position on employment discrimination is.”

If Republicans were smart, they’d listen to that rising generation of young people who want government to stay not just out of the economy, but out of our personal lives, too.

We do, actually. We say employers ought to get to choose whom they hire. They created the business, so they should be allowed to discriminate against stutterers, TV hosts, old people -- anyone they don’t want.

But Coulter has a point.

Government rarely makes a dent in people’s drug use or their ability to partner with people of their own gender.

“Seventy percent socialism” does much more harm. It kills opportunity and wrecks lives.    

But Coulter doesn’t just want to downplay “liberal” parts of the libertarian agenda. She opposes them.

When I asked why gays can’t marry, she said, “They can -- they have to marry a member of the opposite sex.”

I see why the students were annoyed by Coulter’s shtick.

If Republicans were smart, they’d listen to that rising generation of young people who want government to stay not just out of the economy, but out of our personal lives, too.

Fortunately, some Republicans are onboard with that. Another of my guests was Justin Amash, congressman from Michigan.

The young libertarians admire him, in much the same way they admire Republicans like Sens. Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Jeff Flake; Gov. Gary Johnson; and new Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.

Amash focuses on government spending. He has pictures of libertarian economists like Murray Rothbard in his office, and he warns that big government -- including military spending -- will bankrupt America. He’s not afraid to call for cuts in popular programs like Medicare, Head Start and food stamps.

After Amash’s complaints about government spending, establishment Republicans in Congress kicked him off the budget committee. One said it was because of the “a**hole factor ... inability to work with other members.”

I asked Amash about that.

“It might be because I wanted to balance the budget,” says Amash. “The level of government spending is so insane.”

It is. Even if the sequester cuts happen -- cuts the left calls “brutal” -- in eight years the feds will still spend $5.3 trillion annually ... just a little less than the $5.4 trillion they will spend if no cuts are made.

The “brutal” sequester is anything but. Even the much-feared Paul Ryan budget plan would only reduce the federal debt in 2021 from the $26 trillion President Obama projects to ... $23 trillion.

So with our economic house in such disarray, Coulter is right to avoid getting bogged down in fights over drugs and homosexuality. But I prefer the way Amash handled the libertarian-conservative conflict.

Michelle Montalvo of Temple University asked him to “comment on your faith and how you reconcile that with your libertarian beliefs? There are stereotypes about libertarian students, that we’re Republicans who love to do drugs, [but] we’re not all godless.”

Amash answered, “I’m an Orthodox Christian ... and I believe that the government is a hindrance, a lot of times, to our religious liberty.” But he doesn’t want government to promote Christianity. “Get government out of the way, allow people to make choices. We can’t legislate morality and force everyone to agree with us.”

The young people at the conference worry about the economy. They worry less about drug use and gay sex -- most have come to see those as socially acceptable.

Instead of insulting libertarians or kicking them off congressional committees, it’s time for Coulter -- and other Republicans -- to stop suggesting that those who want the government out of their personal lives are morally suspect.

Then we can concentrate on the important things.

John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of  "No, They Can't: Why Government Fails-But Individuals Succeed," "Give Me a Break" and of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity." To find out more about John Stossel, visit his website at johnstossel.com.

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Why is the US so reticent to read the right messages in Asia and the Pacific?

President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe set the stage last week for Japan's inclusion in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade bloc that includes 11 nations but excludes China. With this move, the US has set a dangerous precedent and one that will immediately alienate a critical trading ally.

This confrontational style, which includes America’s military pivot towards Asia, won’t fly well with China’s equally confrontational leader Xi Jinping. Mr. Xi has already come out swinging at American swagger, noting that foreigners across the Pacific have “nothing better to do” than “engage in finger-pointing at us.” 

In the US, politics often wins the day and anti-Chinese sentiment – no matter how warranted the concerns on human rights, Tibetan sovereignty, labor and environmental standards – is a cheap shot to win patriotic points among the US populace.

Xi also pointedly took issue with American meddling and interventionism saying, in a pointed remark, that “[China] does not mess around with you”. Xi illuminates a general problem in Washington when it comes to Western diplomacy across the Pacific. In the art of diplomacy, particularly among superpowers, one must be deft at reading cultural clues and contexts and responding appropriately. Failure to do so, whether intentionally or not, has the potential to completely fetter basic progress or, worse, ignite a violent conflict that is direct or by proxy.

When it comes to Asia and the Pacific, the USA seems particularly reticent to read the right messages. Myanmar, for example, did not open up its doors because of America’s sanctions – though they may have been a small deterrent to a continued clampdown by the government now in Naypyidaw. Instead, it was motivated by more regional influences, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the trading implications and consequences of continued reform-related recalcitrance.

In Myanmar, America’s economic lesson awaits. If the Obama administration is to pivot to Asia, it had better understand the subtle sinews that intersect its cultures and its subcontinents. 

The TPP is a foolish move, not simply because it overlooks environmental and labor standards that should be a part of any fair trade package, but also because China has now surpassed the US as leading a trading partner in the world. 

One hundred and twenty four nations consider China their largest trading partner, while only 76 nations claim the USA as their largest. This is a complete turnaround from six years ago, when the USA was the larger trading partner for 127 nations and China only claimed 70. The times are quickly changing.

Keeping China out of the TPP, therefore, does much to alienate other nations and little to further America’s economic security. In an unsurprising response to the TPP, a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade bloc is being established that encompasses 16 nations, including all of ASEAN and China, but not the USA. 

America first set the dangerous precedent of exclusion, which is now being replicated in response, to the endangerment of their trade-based economy. 

Don’t get me started on how bombastic the USA is with China on the currency front, given similar US involvement in manipulation of markets and the fact that China owns over a trillion dollars’ worth of American debt. Antagonism is not helpful here.

The USA’s military lesson in the Asia Pacific is equally telling. When America’s greatest potential adversary in Asia – China – has only one aircraft carrier, which it purchased from Ukraine, there is little justification for a substantial shift towards a US Navy ramp up. More US ships patrolling already controversial waters, be they in the South China Sea or near the Diaoyu-Senkaku islands, will not help resolve intracontinental land and sea disputes, nor will it advance America’s interests or allies.

There is suspicion in Washington that this ‘pivot to Asia’ was merely a financial gift to the Navy since it hadn’t seen funding increases on a par with other armed forces. Defense contractors, already flush with cash from a cowed Congress, now have new frontiers to fund, retrofit and profiteer from. The American public is wary of more ground and air forces going into Afghanistan and Iraq, but their appetite for other means of warfare, including drones, is not yet exhausted.

Instead of moving Asia disputes and trans-Pacific relations towards trade and legal structures that are more comprehensive and international in nature, the USA, in its pivot, shows how unimaginative and Cold War it remains in its thinking. There is no new innovation or multilateralism here. 

This is unfortunate. 

The USA, more than ever before, must find a way to partner with China on the real emergent threats impacted by growing populations, consumption and carbon emissions – that of climate change, global health pandemics and food security. This is hardly on America’s radar. When it’s off the agenda of the Oval Office, it similarly falls from every other nation’s radar, with the possible exception of the European Union, which continues to lead on climate change.

This couldn’t be more relevant as we consider the security priorities of the next four years. More ships and drones won’t get us closer to a more secure America, not when so much of the world is getting hotter, poorer, more crowded, and when resources are getting scarcer. Hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars spent on bunker-busting bombs is money wasted on a superfluous political game, driven by defense contractors in search of a new dollar, the latest of which has clearly come from the Asia pivot.

To tackle the most grave and serious security threats requires that everyone is at the table – and that includes China and the most antagonistic of Middle East adversaries – to discuss how we’re going to feed a growing 7 billion person population, keep the planet cool enough to avoid climate catastrophe, and ensure that we avoid the easy spread of global pandemics. This must be our focus, not some payoff to ship- or-drone-making contractors, nor a political pander to the latest fear-mongering media campaign. 

Whether Obama takes the high road here depends not solely on the depths of his conscience but also on the public’s proclivity to push for something mightier than the sword. We are at that juncture now; let’s hope the non-political play wins the day.

Michael Shank is adjunct faculty at George Mason University's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and Senior Fellow at the French American Global Forum

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