America can afford
new defense budgetThe issue: President Bush
has proposed a $379 billion
defense budget.It happens every year: The president proposes a defense budget and, no matter who is president or what amount he requests, a chorus of wails erupts that it is too much, we can't afford it, we don't need it, and it takes money away from vital domestic programs. The New York Times, for instance, called President Bush's proposal "bloated and unbalanced."
Since military spending in Hawaii rivals tourism in contributing to the state's economy, let's examine those charges:
>> Can America afford it? Yes, absolutely. President Bush's budget would consume 3.3 percent of gross national product, or the total of the nation's goods and services. That compares with an average of 3.3 percent during the Clinton era and 5.5 percent during the Reagan and senior Bush presidencies. The proposed budget is not even in the ball park with military spending during the wars in Vietnam or Korea.Altogether, these flaws add a third to the cost of defense. In his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned against the power of the military-industrial complex. Successive presidents and secretaries of defense, including President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have promised reforms. There have been a few changes, but mostly it has been tinkering at the margin.>> Does America need it? Yes. Much of the armed forces' equipment is aging. The B-52 bombers flying over Afghanistan were 40 years old; is there a bomber pilot that old? Declining military budgets have caused a failure to replace equipment and to modernize adequately. Further, the proposed budget includes new funds for homeland defense, anti-terror operations, intelligence and communications -- all glaring shortcomings made manifest on Sept. 11. New ships and planes are intended to keep the United States ahead of potential adversaries and thus to deter them, and a decent pay raise is both fair and necessary to recruit and retain good people.
>> Does military spending short-change domestic programs? No. In the current fiscal year, federal outlays for defense are estimated to be less than 25 percent of those for social and economic programs. If spending by state and local governments is factored in, and most of that is social and economic spending, the portion devoted to defense spending drops to just over 10 percent.
>> Will the $379 billion be well spent? Not likely, since it hasn't been for the last five decades. The culprits, in rising order of cost, are interservice rivalry and duplication, excessive and stagnant bureaucracy in the Pentagon, inefficiency and shoddy work in the defense industry and the almost innumerable barrels of pork filled by Congress that alone add at least 10 percent to the defense budget. When The New York Times asserted that "Congress must summon the courage to reshape and reduce this undisciplined budget," the guffaws could be heard 5,000 miles away.
Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine strategist, wrote in 1513: "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." Five hundred years later, the same could said about the U.S. defense establishment.
Shoddy work grounds
airport security firmThe issue: Hawaii cuts off business with
the nation's largest airport-security company.THE unceremonious exit from the nation's airports by their largest private provider of security should be met with some relief, especially as its workers were poised at the entrance to Hawaii's airports. Argenbright Security Inc. has been severely criticized since Sept. 11 for its lapses, but the system under which the company has operated is more to blame. Adequate aviation security can be achieved only when a revamped system is in place.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has decided to sign no contracts with Argenbright to screen passengers and baggage at airports during the transition to a federally run system. The new federal Transportation Security Administration will begin taking over security contracts with private companies on Feb. 17, with completion required by Nov. 19.
Argenbright deserves to be criticized. The company's baggage checkers manned two airports -- in Washington and Newark -- that hijackers walked through on Sept. 11. Its screeners allowed a passenger to pass through a Chicago checkpoint with knives and a stun gun in November. Thousands of passengers had to be evacuated from the San Francisco airport and two jetliners were diverted last week after an unidentified man's shoes triggered an explosives-testing machine, and he proceeded past an Argenbright screener.
Argenbright, which had 40 percent of the nation's airport security market, was licensed in November to do business in Hawaii, and the company announced it would seek airport contracts. Since then, however, it has not received any airport-security contracts in the state, and the federal stamp of disapproval should effectively prevent that.
That leaves other companies' screeners posted at Hawaii's airport checkpoints, which is of little comfort. In December, Honolulu Airport was shut down for nearly two hours after a screener for Akal Security allowed passengers past his checkpoint even though he had spotted the image of a handgun on an X-ray monitor. The image might have been a computer-generated test for screeners.
Most of the airport checkpoints in Hawaii have been assigned to Ohio-based International Total Services Inc., which filed for bankruptcy days after the September terrorist attack. That company also has been accused of lax security practices.
The problem has been a system in which airlines and airline consortiums have contracted security through a low-bid process, resulting in minimum-wage employees with little training. Many in Hawaii are recent immigrants who speak little English.
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
Frank Bridgewater, managing editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, assistant managing editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, assistant managing editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.comRichard Halloran, editorial page director, 529-4790; rhalloran@starbulletin.com
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