Closing Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp

Close Gitmo to Save Money?  Really?

The View from the Middle

Over the weekend I heard the President make the case for closing GITMO (The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp) with a financial argument, which should make us all chuckle or at least scratch our heads.  Frankly, it was a ridiculous scene because of who was making the rationalization and because of the actual merits (or lack there of) of the argument.  Let’s talk about the “who” first.

This President has spent more money than any other President in the history of the United States and will incur more debt than all previous Presidents combined by the time he leaves office.  Having Barack Obama lecture anyone on fiscal responsibility is like having Iran lecture us on women’s rights (like planned Parenthood instructing us on the protection of the unborn, like John Belushi educating us on moderation, like Wilt Chamberlin teaching us the benefits of monogamy, pick your own ridiculous analogy).  President Obama has no credibility in this area so having him deliver a message on financial responsibility is feeble if not laughable.

Now, before we get into the merits of the argument, let’s take a few seconds to review a few basic math facts.  First, everyone in America sort of understands how many a “million” is.  It is the measure that most people connect with being rich.  If a person is a millionaire, they are set for life.  I actually don’t think that’s true anymore (a million dollars isn’t what it used to be), but a million dollars sounds like a lot of money to most people.

The fact is, the government hiccups a million dollars about every eight seconds.  Politicians today don’t even blink an eye until you start talking billions of dollars.  So what is a billion?  A billion is a thousand million.  A thousand million!!!  And, you can barely get a politician to stay awake for spending A THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS.  Our President asked for about a trillion dollars for his failed stimulus program.  So how much is a trillion?

A trillion dollars is a thousand billion dollars.  Or said another way, it’s a million million dollars.  If you took dollar bills and laid them end-to-end, a trillion dollars would stretch to the moon…and back…twenty times.  Now, that’s a lot of money, and our government spends about four trillion dollars a year.  Wow!

So how much do we spend on Gitmo?  If I round up, Gitmo costs us about $400 million dollars a year.  That’s a lot of money to you and me, but it’s a drop in the bucket to Washington.  Remember, I said that politicians in Washington wouldn’t even wake up for less than a billion dollars.  The fact is, $400 million represents about one hundredth of one percent of our federal budget.  Even if we were able to eliminate all of the expenses we now spend on Gitmo, which we couldn’t, it wouldn’t even put a scratch in our annual deficit.

If the President was really interested in bringing some fiscal sanity to the federal budget there are many more obvious and appropriate targets.  The Department of Education, for example, costs us about $70 Billion a year.  Since our children’s SAT and ACT scores have actually gone down since it’s creation in 1979, I think we can eliminate that department and send 90% of that money to the states for their use in education and still save enough money to run about 20 Gitmo’s every year.

Our Defense Department costs us about $500 Billion a year, and there’s no waste there, right?  A one percent cut in defense spending would save us five billion dollars or enough money to run about 12 Gitmo’s every year.  Plus, do we really need the Departments of Labor, Interior, Commerce, Transportation and HUD?  Could we disperse their responsibilities and eliminate a couple of these Departments and save the taxpayers 20 or 30 billion dollars a year?  Enough to run 50 or 60 Gitmo’s!

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security combined are approaching two Trillion dollars a year in our federal budget.  Reforming these programs, like means testing Social Security, could deliver at least a one percent savings (I would argue more like 5%), but a one percent savings would save about $20 Billion, enough to run 50 Gitmo’s every year.

My point is, if we can find a more inexpensive way to deliver the benefits of Gitmo, I’m all for it, but cost savings should probably be a secondary argument at best.  We would want to insure that we keep these prisoners of war separated from our general prison population.  We should also be concerned about keeping our citizens safe and secure.

So, Mr. President, if you are looking for an opportunity for cost savings, you can hardly take a step in Washington without tripping over one more significant than closing Gitmo.  I’m all for spending less, but let’s start with some big-ticket items like the elimination or consolidation of some Cabinet Departments or reform of Welfare, Social Security and Medicare!!