Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Spending Adv. – Link – Trades Off

Military spending trades off with social spending
Huffington 4/22 (Arianna, Co-founder of the Huffington Post, 4/22/10, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/guns-vs-butter-2010_b_548620.html#) GAT

See if you can identify the bleeding heart liberal who said this: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." Noam Chomsky? Michael Moore? Bernie Sanders? Nope, it was that unrepentant lefty, five-star general Dwight Eisenhower, in 1953, just a few months after taking office -- a time when the economy was booming and unemployment was 2.7 percent. Yet today, while America's economy sputters down the road to recovery and the middle class struggles to make ends meet -- with over 26 million people unemployed or underemployed and record numbers of homes being lost to foreclosure -- the "guns vs. butter" argument isn't even part of the national debate. Of course, today, the argument might be more accurately framed as "ICBM nukes, Predator drones, and missile defense shields vs. jobs, affordable college, decent schools, foreclosure prevention, and fixing the gaping holes in our social safety net." We hear endless talk in Washington about belt-tightening and deficit reduction, but hardly a word about whether the $161 billion being spent this year to fight unnecessary wars of choice in Afghanistan and Iraq might be better spent helping embattled Americans here at home. Indeed, during his State of the Union speech in January, President Obama proposed freezing all discretionary government spending for three years -- but exempted military spending, even though the defense budget has ballooned over the last ten years. According to defense analyst Lawrence Korb, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, the baseline defense budget has increased by 50 percent since 2000. Over that same period, non-defense discretionary spending increased less than half that much. This is not about ignoring the threats to our national security. And it's certainly not about pacifism. To quote the president's 2002 speech: "I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war." Iraq was never about making us safer. And the original rationale for going to war in Afghanistan -- taking on al Qaeda -- has been accomplished, with less than 100 members of the terrorist group still there. As former Bush State Department official Richard Haas has said, "If Afghanistan were a war of necessity, it would justify any level of effort. It is not and does not." In fact, by helping destabilize Pakistan and stretching our military to its limits, our presence in Afghanistan is actually making us less safe. The irrationality of continuing to spend precious resources on wars we shouldn't be fighting is all the more galling when juxtaposed with our urgent and growing needs at home. The LA Times' Doyle McManus offers an eye-opening example of just how far our mission in Afghanistan has "creeped." His on-the-ground report on the military's upcoming push in Kandahar (cost: $33 billion) -- a surge the military considers as important as securing Baghdad was to Iraq -- doesn't include a single mention of taking on al Qaeda. Instead, McManus describes Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, telling an Afghan leader that the goals of the surge, as well as defeating the Taliban, include "reducing corruption, making local government work and, eventually, providing jobs." Is that why we are still fighting a war there nine years later, spending American blood and treasure -- to provide jobs for the people of Kandahar? It's like a very bad joke: "The good news is, the Obama administration is ramping up a multi-billion program that will create a host of new jobs. The bad news is, you have to move to Kandahar to apply." The Bush-era rationale for these overseas misadventures was always: We'll fight 'em over there, so we don't have to fight 'em over here. Today, it seems, we're fighting to create jobs for 'em over there, while we don't have enough jobs for our people over here. At a time when so many hardworking middle class families are reeling from the economic crisis -- and our country is facing the harsh one-two punch of more people in need at the exact moment social services are being slashed to the bone -- that seems like the most perverted of priorities. "Civilizations," argued historian Arnold Toyenbee, "die from suicide, not by murder." That is, our future is dependent on the choices we make and the things we decide to value. In a video put together by Robert Greenwald's Rethink Afghanistan campaign, Berkeley professor Ananya Roy defines the troubled state of America not so much as a fiscal crisis as "a crisis of priorities." And Barney Frank, who has been one of the few in Washington arguing for the need to cut military spending, says that ." Looking at the money we've spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, Frank says: "We would have had $1 trillion now to help fix the economy and do the things for our people that they deserve."

Spending Adv. – I/L – No Oversight

The “cost-plus” contracts of PMC’s encourage cost-raising – on top of that, the Army is spending even more attempting to keep soldiers from going private
Weiner 6 (Rebecca U., International Security Program fellow, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19402/private_military_contractors_come_with_strings_attached.html) GAT

On the other hand, as corporations, PSFs possess the leverage of private-sector mechanisms for structuring incentives. While even the most elite soldiers are compensated like mid-level bureaucrats, contractors are compensated like management consultants. The effect has been to cannibalize the military's labor pool-in particular the top echelon. Lured by salary increases of up to 400 percent, hundreds of soldiers have decided not to re-enlist but to "go private," adding to the resentment of the less-compensated and increasingly shorthanded force they leave behind. The Army has recently resorted to offering bonuses of up to $150,000 as incentive for soldiers to stay. Finally, there is the Pentagon's preference for "cost-plus" contracts, which treat PSFs as if they are on retainer-they respond quickly when they are needed, provide the service desired, and bill after the fact for the costs outlaid, adding a fixed award on top. The result encourages neither cost-cutting nor enhanced performance. The rationale for using this form of contract is efficiency: it allows PSFs to provide surge capacity. However, when the surge turns out to be chronic and constant, this logic should be re-examined.

Because of the lack of oversight for these PMC’s, they can overcharge the government by 40%
Burton 9 (Chris, member of the Seminar in Peace Operations, http://www.docstoc.com/docs/44001173/Private-Military-Companies) GAT

Another important issue about the costs of PMC’s is the cost of oversight mechanisms or the costs of lack of oversight. In order to ensure efficiency of PMC’s, oversight mechanisms are the most important tools. But they bring extra costs to their principals. Moreover, as mentioned by Ronou, absence of effective oversight mechanisms causes different types of cost; waste of resources, sacrifice of quality or overbilling. For example, Halliburton overcharged the U.S. by overpriced gasoline and for services not rendered (such as billing for meals not cooked). According to some Army auditors, it overcharged by an average of around 40 %.