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The Decline of America: The Way Out (III)

[Jerry Brown on MILITARY SPENDING AND PRIORITIES]

The President says there just isn't enough money there for childcare.
There isn't enough to fully fund Head Start.  There's not enough for
protecting the environment, but there was enough there to approve the
B2 bomber by the Senate. Maybe it won't be there when it goes to the
House, because now Bush has told us, given us permission to know and
to speak, that Russia isn't the threat that it was.

But I want you to notice something.  It was the president who had to
give permission to discuss the fact that we may not have to build all
these bombers, although he said he wanted the B2 bomber, its only
mission is to get through Russian radar which is now in the hands of
the Ukranians.  And we don't have enough money, but the military
budget of tens of billions, which by the way, you notice it was still
the same $291 billion as though nothing had happened in Russia?  It's
incredible.

I know they're going to cut it down the road, and it's phased to be
reduced, but the fact of the matter is, as we are standing here 
today in Santa Monica, tens of billions of dollars are being spent to
defend Germany against Soviet soldiers who are being paid and 
housed and fed and clothed by the German gov't. Did you know that?  I
don't know how many of you knew that, but Gorbachev cut a deal
with the German gov't. to remove all the Soviet troops over the next 5
years if the German gov't. would pay for their upkeep to the
tune of $5 billion.  

That means that we are paying billions of dollars to defend Germany
against soldiers that it's paying for, but we don't have enough 
money for a universal health care system to cover everybody in this
country.  

Don't believe it.  It's not true.  There is enough money to do what is
needed to be done, and what must be done, and the dying of cities and
the destruction of a whole generation of Americans right before our
eyes is every bit as much a threat to each of us and to our society as
the collapse of the banking system.

Near Tacoma, Boeing is making the B2 bomber, and there are 8500 people
working on the B2 bomber.  They're going to say, ok we're for the B2
bomber, we're fighting for you, we're fighting for your jobs, and then
all of a sudden Russia collapses and it's absolutely absurd to
continue spending $900 million dollars for a plane to get through
radar that isn't even controlled by the enemy anymore and an enemy
which we can probably start bailing out already.

In fact, they've already set aside $1 billion in military aide for
humanitarian aide which is probably a good idea.  So then when
everybody wakes up to the fact that this is an absurdity, then they
will cut it off.

But don't think the head of Boeing is going to have his salary
reduced.  Don't think that the Congressmen who are offering all this
hope about keeping this going are going to want to get out of office
or have their salaries reduced.  It will just be the 8500 workers.
Where were people planning to build high speed trains or do something
in the civilian space program to protect the environment with Landsat
or with communications or doing something positive?  Why wasn't there
a plan?

It was pretty obvious after the B1 worked so well that maybe there
might be some problems with the B2.  But that's not in the business,
because if you start planning, well then that's governmentt. and then
government is going to interfere with our business.  It' s just much
easier to say keep pumping up the defense budget and just keep doing
that, and anybody who's against that is against job s and doesn't
understand the Congress.

Well, part of that argument's collapsed now, but the other side is
that we haven't really made the conversion.  We haven't really laid
out the strategy to keep those people working, and here's my point.

The only people who will suffer will be those 8500 people, not the
politicians, not the managers, not the lobbyists, not the cold
warriers.  They will go on to something else, and that is the problem
of politics, and that is the challenge that each of us has to ad dress
ourselves to.

-- Jerry Brown

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