Massive Hike in Military Spending Financed by Cuts in Health and Education
US House Passes $636 Billion Military Spending Bill


by Joe Kishore
WSWS
2009-12-18


With overwhelming bipartisan support, the United States House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a massive $636 billion military appropriations bill for 2010.

The bill includes some $128 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does not fully fund the Obama administration’s escalation in Afghanistan, making likely further appropriations for war spending next year.

The deployment of 30,000 additional US troops is expected to cost $35 to $40 billion a year. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that the first of the new troops ordered to Afghanistan have begun to arrive.

All told, US military spending in 2010 will be close to $700 billion. If one adds the hundreds of billions of dollars in military-related spending included in the budgets of other departments, the total is as much as $1 trillion.

The overwhelming support for the bill, which passed 395-34, demonstrates the bipartisan agreement in Washington on the war policy of the Obama administration. The vote comes shortly after President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize speech, in which he outlined an expansion of US militarism.

Among the many separate provisions of the bill is the allocation of $80 million to acquire more unmanned Predator drones, currently being used to bomb both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The administration is planning on expanding these operations, including drone attacks against insurgents in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan that might target the large city of Quetta.

Only 23 Democrats voted against the bill, joined by 11 Republicans. Among those voting for the measure was House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (Democrat, Wisconsin), who has postured as a critic of the Afghan escalation.

The Senate, which is currently discussing Obama’s health care overhaul, is expected to vote in support of the measure later this week.

Added on to the bill was a two-month extension of the anti-democratic Patriot Act, which also has bipartisan support. Other amendments to the bill temporarily extended jobless pay and health care assistance for the unemployed. These measures will be reexamined in February.

The House did not include a measure that would extend the estate tax, which applies only to the wealthiest layers of the population. The tax is due to expire next year as part of Bush’s tax cuts.

The House leadership also decided to exclude from the military appropriations bill a separate “jobsâ€