It’s been a while since I did one of my politics is money posts, and just today a headline caught my eye that makes me double-down on that certainty- Reuters is reporting that the senate has just approved more than $600 billion in new military spending. So the message is- if you want more than half a trillion dollars for the military, no problem, we’ll get that through without a problem. If you want something like that for health care, prepare for a drawn out debate and question marks even after that. Frustrating.

The bill also carries provisions to extend jobless aid and sends money to supplement Medicare payments and rates for another 2 months, but the thrust of it is to fund military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a pretty simple jump to say, “Where are our priorities?”

While it can certainly be argued that military strength is as necessary to our collective safety and health as personal medical care, the simple fact that the vote took place without any real debate and passed 88-10 in the senate after passing the House earlier in the week goes to show how easy it is to get money for the military.

This new bill will cover the Pentagon until the end of September next year. The bill is being touted by the Obama administration as a partial victory for their drive to cut down unwanted weapons programs- ummm, maybe, but that’s still a lot of money, guys. I wouldn’t go championing this as a victory of fiscal responsibility. They did cut out funding for F-22’s from Lockheed Martin, but they are still putting $2.5 billion toward 10 Boeing C-17’s.

This is all, of course, in addition to the $787 billion already spent on the economic stimulus- and why can’t we get around $100 billion a year for some health care reform?
Overall, jobless benefits and health insurance subsidies for unemployed Americans and current reinforcement rates for doctors under Medicare have all been sustained.

The bill also does a potpourri of other things, like extending highway and transit programs and the Patriot Act, loosens regulations on small business lending (yea!), and, strangely, allows satellite tv to retransmit broadcast TV. Fair enough.

I’m all for easier lending to small businesses right now, as that will be a welcome move to middle-level help for the economy. As for the Patriot Act, well, it’s not going anywhere, as we can see.
The satellite TV ok to rebroadcast TV is an interesting thing to slip through- where are the network TV lobbyists? That seems to be a bit on par with bloggers going after newswires or YouTube and Hulu going after movies and visual media in general. While I’m sure there are contracts involved, the idea that broadcast TV is now available to just about anyone brings us back to the money. Politics is, afterall, all about the profit.

The big winners this time around are the military and new tech, with partial victories that can be claimed by small businesses and interim celebrations for the jobless and government-dependent Medicare patients. Onward into the grace of the dollar, dear friends.

Photo Credit: AMagill (via Flickr under CCL)