In case you missed it,

[CrispyQ]

an excellent article by Barney Frank!

Cut the Military Budget

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/frank/print

snip...

I am a great believer in freedom of expression and am proud of those times when I have been one of a few members of Congress to oppose censorship. I still hold close to an absolutist position, but I have been tempted recently to make an exception, not by banning speech but by requiring it. I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending.

Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good. Obviously people should be concerned about the $700 billion Congress voted for this past fall to deal with the credit crisis. But even if none of that money were to be paid back--and most of it will be--it would involve a smaller drain on taxpayer dollars than the Iraq War will have cost us by the time it is concluded, and it is roughly equivalent to the $651 billion we will spend on all defense in this fiscal year.

When I am challenged by people--not all of them conservative--who tell me that they agree, for example, that we should enact comprehensive universal healthcare but wonder how to pay for it, my answer is that I do not know immediately where to get the funding but I know whom I should ask. I was in Congress on September 10, 2001, and I know there was no money in the budget at that time for a war in Iraq. So my answer is that I will go to the people who found the money for that war and ask them if they could find some for healthcare.

===

Just think what we could do with 25% of the military budget! And I won't even go into what we could do with the money we waste in Iraq.

[jillan]

1. I love Barney Frank - everything about him. He is there for the people, not for the politics.

[PatSeg]

3. And he is funny as hell

Never minces words!

[Muttocracy]

2. fantastic! thanks for pointing it out. nt

[livvy]

4. He cracks me up.

I was watching the CSpan rerun of the banking hearings, and he had that gavel clutched in his hand. When he was talking he was waving it around. Then he would put it down, like he remembered he shouldn't be waving it around like that. But the next time they would show him, there it was again waving around while he talked like a magic wand, punctuating his every syllable. I got the feeling he would have liked to use it on a few heads.

[jillan]

5. Ha - I can totally picture Barney wanting to use it on some heads.

:P