When was the last time that the United States was attacked by sea? Think hard, now. There was that German U-boat off the coast of Maine back during World War II… Das Boot and all that. There was the Hunt for Red October stuff during the Cold War, but the attack from the Soviet Union never came, and the Cold War is long over.
The only naval threat the United States now faces is from Japanese and Canadian fleets accused of overfishing. Nonetheless, the Navy has developed a plan to increase its fleet size “from 285 battle force ships in 2006 to 313 by 2020″. That’s the plan revealed by the Congressional Budget Office yesterday.
What does the USA need these new big boats for? Why do we need more fighting ships on the sea than we have now?
We don’t, of course, unless you categorize big corporations that get money through defense contracts as part of “we”. Government spending on big boats to go off to war spreads money around in ways that are rather convenient to the corporations involved in making the boats. Those are corporations that are well-represented by lobbyists on Capitol Hill, and are well-equipped through bundling and 527 shadow campaign spending to influence elections.
It won’t be those lobbyists or corporate fundraisers who end up spending the money for the unnecessary expansion of the U.S. Navy’s fleet of war boats. It will be us, the little folks, America’s working people, who will have to pay the bill.
It’s a big bill too. The Navy claims that the new, bigger fleet of boats will cost Americans 16.1 billion dollars every year for the next generation to build. The auditors at the Congressional Budget Office, however, have estimated that the Navy’s estimation of costs is 30 percent lower than what the actual costs will be. The CBO warns that the actual spending will be on the order of 27 billion dollars every single year for the next 22 years. That’s double the amount that the Navy has spent on new boats in the last few years.
Remember, that’s just the extra expense for building these new boats. Imagine what the ongoing cost of operating and maintaining them will be. Consider as well the additional costs that will come from the disposal of the hundreds of huge warships that these new boats will replace.
Now consider that those hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars aren’t going to be paid for in cash. This big boat spending will be done with money that the American government doesn’t have. It will be deficit spending on America’s credit card. We will, and our children will, have to pay big interest charges on the many hundreds of billions of dollars.
Much of that money will go to countries like China,. Those countries will be able to use their profits from financing our bigger Navy to build their own fleets, but with more boat for their bucks. Expanding the U.S. Navy in this way actually makes us more vulnerable.
This expansion of the U.S. Navy to an unprecedented fleet size will place a huge unnecessary financial burden on our country, and make us less safe in the process. Are you willing to make this sacrifice for the sake of profits for big corporations?
If you don’t contact your representative and two members of the U.S. Senate to protest this immense waste, Congress will go on assuming that it’s all fine and dandy with you.
