Will Defense spending bankrupt our nation like the USSR?

[shance]

Did you know that the tax dollars we pay to the Federal Government, almost all (95%) of it goes to "Defense spending" - that is, building more bombs, tanks and weaponry to kill people? (Watch the documentary "From Freedom to Fascism")

Our federal tax dollars DO NOT go to education, public roads and highways and all the things you may have been led to believe it does.

So, all this money that we are giving to the government is being spent on "Defense", while our education, health care and environment are being intentionally destroyed.

Time to return to state power and quit feeding the Washington monster that is ruining our nation and going the way of the Soviet Union.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. It already has.

We are the financial dead man walking. Everyone knows it, nobody knows what to do about it.

[aquart]

3. I was about to say.

[Greyhound]

15. Beat me to it also. If the sheeple had any idea how deep the shit

we're in is, they would add to it in their pants. We have no future because there is no fix that doesn't bring down entire sectors of our, and therefore the world's, economy.

[bobthedrummer]

23. Yep. Plus economic warfare has been going on for awhile against us. n/t

[shifting_sands]

2. Military Budget

In a word "YES" we could cut at least one third maybe more and still have more "military" toys than anyone else in the world. Lord even if they would reign in the fraud that would give a couple of billion for social programs

[lcordero2]

5. It's a military CONTRACTOR budget, not a military budget

[bryant69]

18. Good correction.

It's not important to get the facts right - not compared to getting our ideological framework right.

Anybody whos says that 95% of our tax money goes to the military CONTRACTOR budget is mistaken or lying.

Bryant

[lcordero2]

4. This "defense spending" has to be framed a different way

It has to be framed as "defense contractor spending/crony pocket greasing" since, obviously, the "boots on the ground" are not benefitting from it.

1. A major part of the force are being denied military schools that they need in order to KEEP their promotions.

2. Most equipment that is in non mission capable condition.

[bryant69]

21. I'm not going to disagree with you on this point

I think you are right mor or less.

But no matter how right you are on this point, if you mix it with 95% of our tax money goes to the military contracters - that's not true.

Perhaps what you meant to say was that 95% of the money we spend on defense goes to line the pockets of military contracters.

Bryant

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Considering the state of our infrastructure - it already has.

If one believes that the government "should" provide for the common welfare, and then look at the state of health care, education, the environment, social-security, care for the aged, etc, and then consider the 100's of billions wasted on "defense", I'd say that Osama has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

[bryant69]

7. That opening statement is not accurate

Although we do spend a lot on military spending, to say 95% is not even close to being accurate.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. We Spend About 20% Of The Budget ....And 5 or 6% of GDP

I think the USSR was around 20% of GDP by small c conservative standards.

Much of the budget goes to social security, medicare, and paying down the debt.

[SOS]

20. Accurate based on individual income tax

Tax receipts from individual Federal income tax returns are running at about $1 trillion.

Military budget is $539 billion.
Unbudgeted Iraq/Afghanistan is $100 billion.
Veterans benefits are $76 billion.
DoD portion of interest on national debt is $350 billion.

War, past and present, consumes slightly more than 100% of your federal tax dollar.
The rest is ripped off out of the Social Security trust fund, from other non-individual tax sources (import duties, miniscule corporate taxes etc), and of course, borrowed from China.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxFacts/overview/source.cfm
http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

[DemocratSinceBirth]

22. The Budget Is Damn Near Three Trillion Dollars

I know the defecit is big but it can't be two trillion dollars a year..

[SOS]

25. They comingle SS and Federal tax revenue.

The Federal government is fraudulently including the Social Security Trust Fund as a budget item.
It is not a budget item.
SSA receipts are about 2 trillion a year.
Gore's lockbox concept addressed this corrupt accounting, but nobody seemed interested.

[IntravenousDemilo]

8. Whaddya mean, "will"? n/m

[populistdriven]

9. U.S. national debt as a percentage of GDP - WH data.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. Note that the Bush restoration

moved that red line right back to the slope it was on when his daddy was deposed. Their plan is was and has been to saddle the federal government with mountains of debt.

[bryant69]

12. That is everything we spend, not just defense spending

that says nothing about "the tax dollars we pay to the Federal Government, almost all (95%) of it goes to "Defense spending."

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[populistdriven]

24. I am not so sure about that

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative-size-graph.php?meas=GDP

not saying I agree with this though

and obviously our spending is out of line with the rest of the world



the biggest problem we have is not military spending, it is taxes are too low and healthcare costs are too high

[JohnnyRingo]

11. As Afghanistan aided in the bankruptcy of The Soviet Union

So is Iraq draining this country.

I'm always happy to point out the possibility to my few repub friends that Russia wasn't dissolved because of a well timed soapbox speech by Reagan, and there's a very real chance that the US could see similar fate by an empire-driven GWB.

I can imagine a future of smaller autonomous nation-states here:
The New England seaboard states
Midwestern manufacturing union
The Southern Gulf shipping zone
The desert area led by the strategicly located California
Of course Texas and Montana will be their own countries.

While most states have their own National Guard, what we won't have is a central federal government and a far ranging military.

The 21st century maps may be much different.

[Mendocino]

27. Great Lake States/ Ontario Union

They will be the Saudia Arabia of Water.

[Jack Rabbit]

13. What tax dollar?

The Republican don't collect taxes, even in time of war.

That's what's bankrupting us.

Do you know why Bush wants to "stay the course" in Iraq? Because he really thinks withdrawal would make him look weak, but to do anything serious in Iraq, assuming it would work, he would have to raise taxes and impose a draft. All the haves and have mores won't like the first and nobody will like the second.

Spedning is up; revenue is down. Remember when the GOP was the party of fiscal responsibility? I do, but I'm in my mid-fifties.

[MadHound]

16. I think that you're off on your estimation of military spending.

However I think that we're still spending waaay too much on our military. Currently above board, public knowledge military spending runs between 20-25%, depending on exactly what you put under the military classification. However there's a whole other side to military spending that we know absolutely nothing about, black budget items for secret weapons programs, classified R&D, and the intelligence community. Best estimates on these totals put our military spending at somewhere between 40-50%.

This sort of spending is simply unsustainable, and we're seeing the cumlitive effects of it now in record debt, collapsing infrastructure, decreasing social spending, etc. And if we continue on down this road much longer, yes, it will completely bankrupt this country and bring about our downfall, much like what happened in the USSR.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

19. I Thought Defense Spending

I thought defense spending has been fairly constant since World War 2 and actually came down a bit after the Cold War.. If actual defense spending was two and one half times as much as "on the books" defense spending that would mean hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars are floating around in the ether.

[MadHound]

26. Yes, it would indeed mean that hundreds and hundreds of billions

Of dollars are indeed "floating around in the ether". Hell, the following is from 2002, but it gives you a good idea of what's going on. The Pentagon doesn't just "lose" 2.3 trillion dollars, it gets diverted<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml>. Nor does the government actually buy $500 toilet seats or $50 hammers, at least not all the time. A lot of that money is also diverted. Where? Well sure, it can be going to line individual's pockets, and probably does. But a lot of it also goes into black budget operations, developing new high tech weapons, conducting secret covert wars and excursions, all under a black budget.

In addition, the intelligence community uses taxpayers' money in order to conduct operations that will garner them even more money. Iran Contra is just the tip of the iceberg on this one. For a real eye-opening read concerning CIA actions and how they both chew up taxpayer money and bring down foreign policy, pick up the Politics of Heroin, by Alfred McCoy. It is no accident that we're back in the Golden Triangle, and while natural gas pipelines figure into the mix, heroin plays a big role. After all, Afghanistan had another record poppy harvest this year, second in a row.

I would also reccomend reading Secret Empire by Philip Taubman. It details the rise of clandestine projects undertaken by the CIA and others during the 1950s. It also provides insight into the rise of the secret budgets that fuel these projects.

Yes, hundreds of billions of dollars disappear into the ether on an annual basis while the rest of this country slowly settles into the dust of history. Our domestic needs are sacrificed on the twin altars of war and greed. And it's been going on for fifty plus years now. However with the rapid escalation that we've seen under the Reagan and both Bush administration, we are dancing perilously close to the edge of that cliff that the Soviet Empire went over. It will be a hard landing.

[Mist]

17. This admin. is married to the idea of replicating the Vietnam war as

much as possible, even to the non-funding of it. Johnson tried to run the war AND social problems at home without raising taxes. Didn't work. Bushco has substituted contractors for social programs, and are trying to run the war without raising taxes. Of course it won't work. And, back in the 60's, the wealthy and corporations paid far more in taxes than they do now. Our economy is based on what, exactly? Seems like the lightest and airiest of paper balloons...

[upi402]

28. state power no, return power to citizens and not corporations

:toast:

[shance]

29. Great point - how does one do it? One thing that must be done

is to stop allowing Congress to use our money to destroy our country and build more murderous tonka toys and utilize poisonous/environmentally devastastating materials like depleted uranium, which renders cities and towns totally toxic uninhabitable dead zones for centuries. It is truly inconceivable what these morons are doing in Congress.

To call them leaders is nothing short of a farce.

They are a joke, and a joke on humanity and all creatures on this earth who are being annihilated off the planet.

We are paying to destroy ourselves and Congress is writing the check off of our bank account.