Top officers in the United States Air Force have said that a massive $1.5 trillion investment into a new stealth fighter jet has failed. The F-35 jet was initially intended to be a replacement for Cold War-era fighter jets that have become antiquated in recent times. The replacement program was meant to design a reliable, low-cost plane that could be produced to create a new fleet. However, what the American government has created instead is a fleet full of buggy, unreliable fighters costing around $100,000 per plane. In the time it has taken for this experiment to fail, the F-35 itself has become obsolete, according to Forbes.
Peter White, Campus Liberal:
The worst part about this news, in addition to the gross misuse of government funds for an unnecessary project and the incompetence of those in charge of the program, is the time at which this report came out. At a pretty volatile moment in the chambers of Congress, many conservatives claiming that numerous community investment policies are “fiscally irresponsible,” it comes out that the United States Air Force just spent $1.5 trillion with literally nothing to show for it. That money, although taken years earlier, is the same money that the state can’t afford to offer in the form of stimulus packages. That money is the reason we can’t afford Medicare for All and new green policies. That money is representative of the majority of the federal budget.
I suppose it’s easy to think that the F-35 is just one failed investment, or that $1.5 trillion isn’t that much when the cost is spread over years. On both counts, one who thinks these things would be right is almost right. According to the National Priorities Program, an organization that has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, over 60% of the annual U.S. discretionary budget goes to the military industrial complex. This percentage totals to easily more than $1 trillion every year. So no, it isn’t just one failed investment. Although it isn’t fair to call all of that money a failure, it is only right to point out that almost all of that money could be better used elsewhere. Even though the U.S. military budget is more than the next 10 largest countries’ budgets combined. Even though the U.S. army is bigger and more advanced than every other military in the world… combined. Even though all of these things are true, we spend the most for healthcare, the most for housing, and get paid the least out of all other developed countries.
Many people blindly support “defense spending” to the point where it is basically required for a candidate to say they support defense spending on the campaign trail. To put it simply, we should be supporting people who are against endless wars and illegitimate claims of the U.S. over sovereign nations in the Middle East. The F-35 should remind us that our military is given too much money while people starve on the streets back home. To quote Tupac Shakur, “they got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor.”
Jackson Hudgins, Campus Conservative:
From a conservative perspective, it is plain to see that a failure such as this one is another example of how bloated government and complicated bureaucracy lead to needless and wasteful spending. That’s not to say that defense spending in the United States is necessarily a bad thing, or as large of an expenditure as others say. The reality is that defense spending in the U.S. makes up 15-16.5% of the total spending any given fiscal year (it’s also mostly discretionary, not mandatory). While that might seem high, it’s nowhere near the 28% spent on Health & Human Services (mostly Medicare and Medicaid) or the 25% spent on Social Security. The health and retirement entitlements covered under these two categories of spending amount to close to $2 trillion, whereas defense amounts to around $500 billion. Even worse, all the spending related to Social Security and Health & Human Services is mandatory, that is, Congress must appropriate enough funding to cover these programs every time a budget is passed. In fact, during government shutdowns, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security remain part of the few programs that are completely unaffected.
While it is most certainly dumb, asinine, and wasteful for the Air Force to have spent as much money as it did on an ultimately obsolete problem, the solution should not be to complain about discretionary appropriations. Whether the appropriations are military, agriculture, or otherwise, Congress and the Executive Branch should look for solutions beyond cutting defense spending. Reforming the system of government contracting in order to control spending on large projects, as well as taking a long look at the largest chunks of mandatory spending and seeing where cuts can be made is the best way to rein in waste and redundancy.
The Conversation is an Opinion column written by two students of opposing political viewpoints, used to discuss current events from different perspectives.
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