Good luck with that, I'll believe it when I see it. Cutting defense spending usually means cutting jobs in some politician's district or home state.
I'm willing to bet the tea party will be against cutting the defense budget once they find out the Democrats are for it.
Wounded vets are such a hassle. However you can't occupy with just drones and you can't win hearts and minds, assuming that is ever possible.
The J-20 is the PRC's attempt to hang with us. I think cutting the budget should begin with weapon systems. We really don't need a new joint strike fighter or more F-22. If anything the J-20 should show how far the rest of the world is to us. That said I will believe that the DOD budget is going to be cut when I see it.
This isn't going to happen right now, and it's not a crisis yet (that I know of), but at somepoint we need to re-think military retirement somewhat. A friend of that spent 5 years in the Air Force told me this weekend that he could have retired now if he had stayed with it. He's 39. He's in the prime of his career. As nice of a benefit as it is, we shouldn't be paying our best military minds to leave and subsidize a private sector job for them at such a young age. I'm sure that retirement around age 40 made sense when most military jobs were more physical, but it doesn't make much sense today. Odds are that if you've been in the military 15 years, your mind is more valuable to national security than your body. Perhaps we should put in penalties on military pension if it's drawn before age 50-55. Obviously any changes couldn't affect those currently serving, but we have to think about it before the military is the next GM.
DoD Spending $600,000 on Sculpture of Fairy Riding Toad Your tax dollars at work: Department of Defense (DOD) employees moving into a new building this fall may start their days walking past a sculpture of a toad with a ten-foot fairy on its back. Federal facilities have never been renowned for their challenging public art, but critics have gone on the offensive since it was revealed that the piece, one of four finalists for the site’s installation, would cost $400,000-$600,000 and would be viewed largely by the same group of about 2,500 employees each day. Granting that the psychic value of seeing a toad with a ten-foot fairy on its back on a daily basis on the nation’s security is incalculable, the price seems a tad high. The story seems to have started circling in late March, and this version of the story at US News makes me wonder if it’s not some bizarre April Fool’s joke: A $600,000 frog sculpture that lights up, gurgles “sounds of nature” and carries a 10-foot fairy girl on its back could soon be greeting Defense Department employees who plan to start working at the $700 million Mark Center in Alexandria, Va. this fall. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/dod-spending-600000-on-sculpture-of-fairy-riding-toad/
yeah, you see this all the time. military guy retires at 40 with 20 years, gets full benefits (which are earned according to contract) and they go and work in the private sector. I don't know how I feel about this, it is service to the country so they deserve a good retirement.
As a nation we really need to reexamine our expenditures. I am, and have been for quite a while, a proponent of scaling back military expenditures because they are based on the history and romance of war. For example, we want faster, more weaponized aircraft for our fighter pilots. However, pilots have become antiquated, like using cap and ball muskets against assault rifles or diesel battleships against nuclear aircraft carriers. Instead of 900+ bases in countries like Germany and Japan, we should reduce our bases to about 30 or so strategic, defensible fortresses. And why build more nuclear capacity when the world knows we won't use it? We have enough to make the world unlivable as it is. However, we can't stop at just the military. We spend billions on ACORN, NPR, farm subsidies that don't don't go to farmers but to huge agricultural product conglomerates, duplicate, ineffectual federal agencies -- the list is endless. Taking the cap off Social Security will pretty much fix SSN for years to come.....what I am saying is we need to examine every nook and cranny of our spending and cut it down to the necessities to maintain the well-being of the nation and its citizenry. But, then again, I'm just a tea party crazy.
conservative web sites estimate about $53MM for ACORN since 1994. Its a little harder to get NPR's figures. anyway, lets say we extrapolate that $53MM to $100MM since 1970 and it wouldn't come close. anyway, this is an example of the problem of both sides of the aisle on this issue. getting caught up in marginal figures. why would you even bring acorn and npr into a dicussion about reducing the defense budget.
The military budget indeed needs a serious trimming, but we can't stop there. All the waste, fraud and unnecessary spending has to be targeted as well. In the aggregate, all of this adds up to the old cliche, "a billion here and a billion there, and it begins to add up to real money."
If I was a junkman selling you cars, Washing your windows and shining your stars, Thinking your mind was my own in a dream What would you wonder and how would it seem? Living in castles a bit at a time The King started laughing and talking in rhyme. Singing words, words between the lines of age. Words, words between the lines of age. Neil Young
Despite the silliness of referencing NPR and ACORN funding as sources of waste akin to DoD, I would happily defund both of those if it meant a massive reduction in DoD spending. Let's say 100:1, minimum.
Maybe 1000 to 1 is better, given that defense expenditures are about 700 billion vs. 90 million for all of NPR. Actually in the end though, it's pretty simple to balance the budget, a combination of three things: Cut defense spending, control health care costs (hint, vouchers aren't going to do this) and increase taxes (inevitable). Everything else is just Sisyphean.
ACORN and NPR were only two of the items cited in a list that encompass thousands of other non-essential government giveaways -- I was using them as examples of sacred cows that every one, left and right, protects and must give up. I agree that the military must be trimmed but we can't stop there.
in the coming years, military will be needed more than ever -- and people want to pare it down? how will martial law be properly enforced if all you reckless nearsighters get your spending cuts??
So instead of citing something like. oh I don't know, how corporations like GE get away with paying no taxes, you use ACORN and NPR as examples of extreme waste and fraud. why aren't you going after the real money?
As I have repeatedly stated, I think the G.E. / Archer Daniels / etc. corporations should be paying their share of taxes without giant subsidies. The military needs to be trimmed as well. However, sacrifice is a two-way street. That means eliminating a broad-range of non-essential services -- of which NPR and ACORN come to my mind in a flash -- that liberals don't like to contemplate. Right now, I feel like Lizzie Borden with a brand new axe.
