Rep. Barney Frank advocates Pentagon spending cuts

Speaking to the Anniversary Dinner of the Coalition for Peace Action in Princeton Saturday, Rep. Barney Frank talked about the need to reduce Pentagon spending. He said we were still doing military budgets as if we had an existential threat to the U.S., like from the Nazis or the former Soviet Union, even though all that changed as of 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down.

Given the tough economic times and strains on the federal budget, Frank  advocated substantial reductions in the Pentagon budget: $150 billion from stopping the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; and another $100 billion per year from the core Pentagon budget. This would reduce total military spending from about $700 billion per year to about $450 billion per year. That would still have the US spending more than the next ten largest national military budgets (of other nations) combined. 

Another example he gave was raising the question of why we need three ways of delivering nuclear weapons and destroying any nation on earth many times over; why couldn't we get by with two ways to do that, he asked.

As Financial Services Chair from 2007-2011, Rep. Barney Frank convened a group called the Sustainable Defense Task Force to research ways in which the Pentagon budget could be reduced in order to help the current deficit. The group's findings were released in a report entitled Debts, Deficits, and Defense: A Way Forward, which found that the Pentagon budget could safely be cut by $1 trillion, 25% of its current size. These findings have given  great strength grassroots peace economy campaigns, most notably the New Priorities Network.  Click here to read the Task Force's summary and full report.