![\"Pentagon\"](\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Pentagon-e1381686377664.jpg\")
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Reason<\/em>‘s Nick Gillespie weighed in<\/a> on a government shutdown debate hosted at the New York Times<\/em> called “What Federal Spending Are We Better Off Without?” Here’s an important passage:<\/p>\n The U.S. accounts for\u00a040 percent<\/a>\u00a0of global expenditures on military might and, in real dollars, our defense spending rose\u00a0nearly 80 percent<\/a>\u00a0between 2001 and 2012. As the shutdown entered its second week,\u00a0The Dayton Daily News<\/a>\u00a0reported that the Pentagon is sending half a billion dollars\u2019 worth of \u201cnearly new\u201d cargo planes to a storage facility in Arizona, where they will join $35 billion worth of other unnecessary aircraft and vehicles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is one of the most illustrative features of the general corruption in Washington and kudos to Gillespie for bringing it into the pages of the New York Times.\u00a0<\/em>Unsustainable entitlement programs are eating up a greater and greater piece of the budgetary pie, threatening the viability of overall fiscal viability into the future. And in this context, politicians continue to allocate billions of taxpayer dollars for Pentagon programs that, often times, even the top military brass say are superfluous.<\/p>\n This summer, the armed services committees in both the House and Senate rejected Defense Department requests<\/a> to shutter military installations in the United States that the Pentagon says it doesn\u2019t want or need.\u00a0The infamous F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, to take another example, costs almost\u00a0$400 billion<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0is the Pentagon\u2019s most expensive weapons program in history. Military officials have told Congress for years\u00a0to scrap it<\/a>, but it has all fallen on deaf ears.<\/p>\n In April, Gen. Raymond Odierno told The Associated Press<\/a> that a $436 million program to build updated versions of 70-ton Abrams tanks is unnecessary. \u00a0\u201cIf we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Army,\u201d Gen. William Phillips told<\/a> a House subcommittee \u201cis buying more [Abrams tanks] than it actually needs at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s when politicians from Ohio, where the Abrams tanks are built, went haywire. Rep. Jim Jordan insisted<\/a> the tanks are necessary for the defense of the country, despite what Pentagon officials say.<\/p>\n “Look,\u201d said Jordan, the plant that builds the tanks \u201cis in the 4th Congressional District and my job is to represent the 4th Congressional District.\u201d Um, by robbing taxpayers blind?<\/p>\n The government is spending into oblivion, saddling an entire generation with an enormous burden of unfunded liabilities, all so they can secure continued support from corporate welfarists like Lockheed Martin. What’s worse is that this kind of corruption and profiteering occurs in sectors well beyond the military industrial complex, as wealthy farm companies, Wall Street financiers, and corporate giants like General Electric know full well.<\/p>\n