[Peace-discuss] @HP: Extend Unemployment Assistance by Cutting the War Budget

[Robert Naiman]

Proposition: if we want to cut the war budget, we need to start by cutting
the part of the war budget that doesn't have anything to do with the war.

Extend Unemployment Assistance by Cutting the War Budget
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/extend-unemployment-assis_b_4804121.html

Just over a week ago, the Senate fell one vote
short<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/us/politics/senate-fails-to-advance-unemployment-extension.html>
of
overcoming a Republican filibuster to pass a three-month extension of
assistance for the long-term unemployed.

The *New York Times*
reported<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/us/politics/senate-fails-to-advance-unemployment-extension.html>
:

Republicans and Democrats, many from the nation's most economically
depressed states, had been trying to reach a solution that would allow
people who have exhausted their unemployment insurance to continue
receiving benefits as long as the government offset the $6 billion cost.

Ultimately, how to pay for the program proved too big a hurdle for senators
to overcome.

The question of helping the long-term unemployed is sure to return. And
with it, the question will return of how to pay for it.

Many Democrats have objected to the idea that extending unemployment
assistance should be paid for with cuts elsewhere. But as a practical
matter, Senate Democrats have already conceded this point, and there is no
realistic prospect that they will un-concede it; even if they did try to
un-concede it, under current arrangements, a bill to extend unemployment
assistance needs five Republican Senators and then has to get through the
Republican House. So, in the future that we can see, any realistic prospect
for extending unemployment assistance, or even getting doing so on the
table of serious discussion, will require having an offset.

As good fortune would have it, right now there just happens to be $6
billion in free money lying on the table, about to be wasted, waiting to be
used as an offset for some good purpose.

It's in the war budget, otherwise known as "Overseas and Contingency
Operations," or OCO. There is currently $5.7 billion dollars in OCO that
doesn't belong there by any reasonable account and is about to be wasted on
Pentagon contractor pork that the Pentagon doesn't need, if it is not
redirected to some useful purpose.

As the American Society of Military Comptrollers noted on January
17<http://www.asmconline.org/2014/01/congress-passes-fy2014-omnibus-appropriations-bill/>
:

The [FY2014 Omnibus Appropriations] bill provides $85.2 billion for
Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), $5.7 billion higher than the
[President's] request. Most of this change comes from the $8.5 billion
transferred from the base [Pentagon] budget offset by a $3 billion cut to
the request for the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund.

Translation: Congress put $8.5 billion in the war budget that the President
didn't ask for. The reason that Congress did this was to spare Pentagon
contractor pork from $8.5 billion worth of cuts, by transferring $8.5
billion in expenditure from the base Pentagon budget to the war budget.

Thus, by Washington's own account, the war budget can be cut by $6 billion
(indeed, it could be cut by $8.5 billion) without touching the Afghanistan
war, because there's (at least) $6 billion in the war budget that has
nothing to do with the Afghanistan war.

Now, of course, cutting actual spending on the Afghanistan war would be a
great idea. Every month that we keep an extra 12,000 troops in Afghanistan,
we flush another billion dollars down the toilet. One of the great crimes
of Washington today is that people who want us to believe that they are
very seriously concerned about the national debt refuse to discuss the
money that we are flushing down the toilet every month in Afghanistan.
Pulling 12,000 troops out of Afghanistan for six months would pay for the
extension of unemployment assistance.

However, if we want to cut the war budget, we have to start somewhere. And
a great place to start cutting the war budget is by cutting the money in
the war budget that was put there for Pentagon contractor pork that has
nothing to do with the war in the first place.

Of course, we could ask Congress to cut the war budget simply by reversing
its decision to gratuitously add $5.7 billion to the war budget that the
President didn't even ask for. But that demand has little juice because it
has no specific constituency, only the broad public interest. The only
practical path to getting that $5.7 billion out of the war budget is to
redirect that money to some useful purpose that the multitude can taste.
Why not redirect it to extending assistance to the long-term unemployed?

Reporting on the Senate's failure to extend unemployment assistance, the
*Times* noted<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/us/politics/senate-fails-to-advance-unemployment-extension.html>
:

[Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] said Democrats would keep pushing to
extend the benefits, which expired at the end of last year, cutting off
more than 1.3 million Americans. That number has since grown to more than
1.7 million.

So, there are 1.7 million Americans who would benefit directly and
immediately from redirecting $5.7 billion in Pentagon contractor pork from
the war budget to unemployment assistance. What if 1.7 million Americans
and their families - and their friends and neighbors - told Congress:
"Restore assistance to the long-term unemployed, and take the money from
the Pentagon contractor pork in the war budget"? Let's put that idea up the
flagpole, and see who
salutes<http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/extend-unemployment-assistan?source=c.tw&r_by=1135580>
.
-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898, extension 1
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