Military spending vs. health care spending.

[Cleita]

So while many our $enators and Congre$$men are selling us down the river to the health insurance industry, they keep beating the drum about cutting health care "waste" in Medicare and Medicaid, programs seniors and the poor depend on. Somehow the thought of $20,000 toilets sold to the military from the past keeps whizzing by my head, and the stockpiling of weapons we will never use because some $enator took the pork home. In the present the $100,000 to $200,000 salaries of mercenaries like Wackenhut and Xe out of the taxpayer's pocket comes to mind.

:nuke::grr:mad::rant:

Yet, I don't hear a peep from Congre$$ about a robust audit to cut the waste in military spending. I bet just from there alone, they could fund 100% paid for health care for everyone in the country. This is something that wasn't brought up in the Town Hall meetings, but I bet we can still do it by phone, mail, email and LTTE.

[goddess40]

1. Feingold

I am a Feingold fan but he dodges military spending questions. At a recent town hall meeting Russ was asked three different time about cutting military spending and he ignored the question each time.

[Cleita]

3. It makes you wonder who they are afraid of. n/t

[gratuitous]

2. Well, when sick people start blowin' up real gud

Maybe we'll spend more money on them. As it is, our country loves violence, and is so totally addicted to it, we will kill millions in service to it.

[Sherman A1]

4. As we spend as much as the rest of the world combined on

defense, I am all for a cut of 50%, which I believe would go a very long way towards paying for health care for all Americans (and probably their pets as well).

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. And college too.

[Kaleva]

8. As a percentage of GDP, we're ranked about 27th

Your argument is akin to saying that Ford spends many times more on advertising then the local Ford dealer in my home town does so Ford ought to reduce that amount it spends by 50% and transfer the savings to employee benefits.

[Sherman A1]

12. While we may be 27th in GDP

name another country that can put have 12 CV's and can put 10 CVSG's to sea?

Do you believe we really need this amount of defense spending?


And in this case Yes, it should be transferred to "employee" or really Owner benefits.

[Kaleva]

13. Are you suggesting we even out the odds against the bad guys?

We could adopt a 1930's Republican style isolationist policy and military spending could then be slashed.

[Sherman A1]

15. Not at all,

I suggest that we spend far too much on useless weapon systems like the F22 and coming F35 when I suspect it would be hard to find anyone that can best the current generation of F15 & 16's & 18"s. Perhaps we should simply build new airframes to replace the aging ones (with efficiency and electronic upgrades where needed). I haven't noted that we have a great deal of difficulty with air supremacy over either Iraq or Afghanistan. I want a strong defense, I just want one much more aligned with our overall needs and less with supporting the military industrial complex.

And who do you suspect will be challenging us that we need our current arsenal?

[Kaleva]

17. An interesting idea

Similar to one I've been promoting over at the Navweaps site which would be, rather then design and construct expensive LCSs, use the old Gearing class DD as the basis of a new general purpose destroyer.

[Sherman A1]

18. I think that has merit

If you look at the standoff aerial weapons of today, one has to ask do we really need a new manned bomber in the inventory? I think rather we need a new bomb truck which could easily be a converted airliner design of some type. (heck, a B-36 design would work just fine and really they looked sooooo cool).

As you mentioned a Gearing class design for the LCS? Well, taking a look wouldn't be a bad idea.

What griped me the most, was sending the guys to Iraq (which was it's own level of dumb idea) without adequete body armor or Hummers that had no protection. We could certainly dominate the skies and the seas, in the area, but could have done that with a single Gearing class and a P-51 (which also, looks sooo cool).

In my opinion there is too much "gee wiz" development and we end up with the wrong weapons for what we need at too high a price to the taxpayer and too high price in opportunity costs to our military. It won't be that very long before it' is unilateral disarmament because we simply can't afford the latest new spiffy thing that someone has their eye upon and can break it up into enough Congressional districts to make it a must have.

I want a strong defense, but the right defense and much less of it, I don't want a return to the 1930's for either our military establishment, but neither do I want it for the populace because we broke the bank buying systems that are so far advanced that we can't use them because we either cannot afford to lose them, they take up so much of the budget that we don't have what we really need to defend ourselves or they are simply the wrong thing for the wrong time.

[azul]

5. Addicted to violence and illness, or just too thick to figure it out?

Oh, gee, we got sickness and wars sprouting up all over the place, let's go ask some generals and doctors what to do. That's the ticket?


How about having/forcing congress commission studies to determine where our debt and dollars are best spent to avoid bankrupting and killing US all?

Find the links between a better diet and less toxic environment to preventing costly and painful illnesses.

Find the link between money spent on fixing poverty and ignorance and injustices of our human neighbors on this planet to a reduction military threat to this country and thus a reduction in our insane war budget.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. A-Fricken-men!

[Kaleva]

9. US spends more on health care, as a percentage of GDP,...

then any other nation.

It's not the amount of money that's being spent that's the problem, its how its being spent.

[Cleita]

10. True but all the Cassandras are carrying on about where are we going to

get the money. I'm just pointing out one place where there is waste and corruption. We can still have a fine military and health care for the same amount of money being thrown away in pork from the military budget. Yes, I know that the health care insurance industry siphons off a huge part of our GDP as compared to other countries. However, it's going to take outlawing private health insurance to achieve stopping that money hemorrhage.

[Kaleva]

11. That's why I support a single payer system

Cutting waste in the military budget is a totally different fight.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. Unfortunately, Americans believe that bogeymen are scarier than disease.

And, are all too willing to spend trillions on killing rather than healing.

[Captain Hilts]

16. Military spending is far less than healthcare spending, as a % of GNP. nt