What's a Budget Buster

David Broder is a serious pundit for the Washington Post and waxes as serious as he ever gets in the Sunday, Nov. 22 edition when he analyses the health care plan before the Congress. He takes the pessimistic view quoting studies that show there will be no savings and that it will be more costly in the long run, shot run, or in any run at all.



I doubt if Broder wrote the title to his piece at least the words do not appear anywhere in the column. The column is headed, "A budget-buster in the making." The title takes the piece to the extreme to create the maximum amount of skepticism and fear.



But it is curious to me that in the matter of health care for the nation's population that lacks there is this effort to claim it is too costly, dangerous, and disasterous. The nation has been dealing with budget busters for decades without a whimper. Bridges to nowhere have stretched to the horizon for years and the states smimply clammord for more. Subsidies have been doled out to various idustries and farmers like sugar cookies without one tear for the poor budget. And all wars win the instant status of "holy" and are funded willy-nilly without consideration for budgets or the future generations. The tack of the previous administration was to keep the cost of war out of the budget lest it been seen for what it is--a budget buster.



Meanwhile, out of sight is a "black budget," reported by Chalmers Johnson. Officially known as "Special Access Programs" which are devoted to secret millitary and intelligence spending. Unsupervised, and unreported, this budget is really a black hole into which billions of dollars disappear. There can be only an estimate of the total devoted to the secret projects which the GAO places at $30 to $35 billion per year. Where are the pundits, the congress people, the editors who lament the misuse of so much money that could be applied to the health and welfare of the nation?



But the funding of the military becomes a deep, dark secret that defies any effort to bring to light or bring to accountability. Again it is Chalmers Johnson who reveals that the deputy inspector general at the Pentagon "admitted that $4.4 trillion in adjustments to the Pentagon's books had to be cooked to compile...required financial statements and that $1.1 trillion...was simply gone and no one can be sure of when, where or to whom the money went."

It makes absolutely no sense to me that there are those who have a hissy fit every time a suggestion is made that health care will cost something and turn a blind eye to the ways in which the present way of spending money drives the nation into deep and dangerous debt. The national priorities are clearly set by powerful interests that benefit a priviledged class, primarily the indutrial/military complex rather than the desperate needs of people.