Priorities, Please!

While health care reform is subject to frequent cost criticisms, America’s outdated trident nuclear program is far more expensive but receives no public attention, writes the Huffington Post. “The lead story in Saturday’s Washington Post, about the nuclear weapons decisions facing President Obama, runs longer than 1,300 words, but five a reader won’t find are ‘cost,’ ‘dollars,’ ‘money,’ ‘debt,’ or ‘deficit.’ A reader would also search in vain for any talk of a ‘fiscal crisis’ or a need to balance nuclear weapons priorities with available revenues. That same reader, of course, rarely has to venture past the first sentence of a health care reform story to find that the subject is a ‘trillion dollar overhaul.’ Occasionally, it’s noted that the trillion dollars is spread over ten years. One particular decision that Obama faces is whether to continue what’s known as the “triad” – three independent ways the United States developed to annihilate the Soviet Union. Warheads can be delivered with bombers, from submarines or with intercontinental ballistic missiles. The military developed ICBMs in the ’50s and ’60s, recognizing that bombers would soon be obsolete and too easy to defend against. But the bomber squadrons have their own internal and industry defenders and have never been phased out. Each leg of the triad costs tens of billions of dollars per year to maintain.”