General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump's Defense Spending Is Out of Control, and Poised to Get Worse
A bipartisan commission has determined that President Trumps recent record defense bill is insufficiently massive to keep America safe, and we should spend more, while cutting entitlements.
The National Defense Strategy Commission concluded the Department of Defense was too focused on efficiency and needed to accept greater cost and risk to search for leap-ahead technologies to help the U.S. maintain superiority.
The panel added that Defense is not where most of the money is. It said Congress should be focused on domestic entitlement programs and interest payments on the national debt as sources of savings.
The report even contains a graph that shows defense spending crawling sadly along the floor of the spending X-axis as mighty mandatory entitlements soar to great heights.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-defense-spending-757028/
That'll go over like a lead balloon.
no_hypocrisy
(46,215 posts)TwistOneUp
(1,020 posts)If you want to BS someone, draw a graph.
We spent almost 40bbn on the F-35, and it still does not work right. Defense spending is crawling - yeah, if you use a logarithmic scale on the Y axis! lol
RockRaven
(15,019 posts)Oh well...
cos dem
(903 posts)SS has its own revenue stream, and is forbidden by law from running a deficit.
Medicare is somewhat of an issue, but is also a highly important program.
Medicaid is not really that large, by comparison.
Debt payments are not optional, since our whole economy is stabilized by confidence in the dollar. If we default, investors will invest in places like China, Russia, India, etc. Why not, if they're not any more risk than the US?
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/
Pope George Ringo II
(1,896 posts)It's that I think that the resources you give the military should be in line with what you ask of it. Some things need absurdly long lead times--like new aircraft carriers, or new tank/plane designs--and you just have to do those every so often like it or not.
I do have some suggestions for asking less of the military, though, like in active operations. And then maybe their budget could shrink a little bit with no real long-term consequences. Whatever you may say about the size of the budget, the frank truth is we've been asking more of those men and women in uniform than we should have. That needs to change.
USALiberal
(10,877 posts)Turbineguy
(37,372 posts)Nobody would complain about $500 Big Macs or $250,000 per week rent for a studio apartment in Barstow.