Obama Military Cuts Could Cost Niagara Falls, New York Area 845 Jobs – Beware The Military-Industrial Complex

By Doug Draper

An already struggling Niagara Falls, New York has received some news that could deal the city yet another serious economic blow.

The city, which has suffered more than its share of job losses in recent decades with the erosion of its once mighty manufacturing base, was informed this past March 6 that U.S. Pentagon cuts could mean the loss of 845 jobs, including 580 part-time Air National Guardsmen positions, at the Niagara Falls, New York Air Reserve Station, according to a recent story in The Buffalo News.

The cuts could also reduce the number of the U.S. Air Reserve Station’s  C-130 cargo planes – aircraft people on both sides of the Canada-U.S. borders have sometimes seen lumbering in the skies overhead – from 11 to eight in the year ahead.

 Word of possible big cuts at the Niagara Falls, New York Air Force Base has been brewing since the start of the year when U.S. President Barack Obama outlined his desire to finally make some cuts to military spending after a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. Congress also has a target to cut the military budget by $487 billion over the next 10 years.

The idea of cutting military spending has long been a popular one among those Americans who feel far too much has been spent on the military at the expense of education, health care and other domestic needs. One bumper-sticker slogan in the U.S. asks; “What f schools had all the money they needed and the Pentagon had to hold a bake sale?”

Five decades ago, the then outgoing U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was the commanding general of the Allied Forces during the Second World War, warned against “the acquisition of the unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

Earlier on in his presidents, Eisenhower stated in one speech that “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed (or) those who are cold and are not clothed. … The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. … We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”

Those words were spoken more than 50 years ago and ever since, the U.S. military budget continued to grow by leaps and bounds, and so much so that more than a few economists point to it as a major reason for the financial mess the country is now in.Yet the minute any American leader has tried to point at areas to cut, every member of the Congress in a district where the cuts are planned is literally up in arms. And has been well documented over the many decades since Eisenhower’s time, the Pentagon and Defense Department have done a very good job of spreading the military bases and weapons-making contracts for industries around so that virtually every congressional district in the country has jobs on the line if any president dares to consider cuts.

It is not surprising, therefore, that even Democratic representatives like Senator Charles Schumer and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter who normally support Obama’s policies, are protesting cuts to the base in Niagara Falls, New York, and one can hardly blame them with all of the jobs on the line. And one can hardly blame them given the number of jobs on the line and the damage their loss could do to the area’s economy, including Niagara, Ontario to the extent we travel back and forth across the border and support each other’s businesses.

It is sad when a community has to count so much on military money – on dollars that could otherwise be going to schools, health clinics and other infrastructure for the community – to keep from going down the drain.

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