Let's make something perfectly clear in regards to Obama and military spending

MadHound

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Mon Jul-18-11 11:23 AM
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Let's make something perfectly clear in regards to Obama and military spending

The cuts to military spending that Obama has made amounts to 400 billion over twelve years. Approximately 33 billion a year or three percent of the entire military budget, less than the automatic budget increase for inflation.

Obama and the Dems are talking about maybe, perhaps, another budget cut of the same size. Again, another 33 billion per year, another three percent decrease in the total military budget.

Notice, please, that I'm talking about the entire military budget, not just the Pentagon budget. For as we all should well know, the budget for the military is spread out among several agencies like the DOE(which services and maintains our nuclear missile fleet), the CIA, etc. The difference between the current Pentagon, or Defense budget and the entire military budget is the difference between 649 billion dollars and 1 trillion plus dollars. Now the exact number for the entire military budget is hard to find, due to how these budget figures are hidden within the budgets of other agencies, and let's not even get into black ops budgets. The low figure, which is what I'm working with, is right at 1 trillion dollars, the upper limit is 1.5 trillion dollars. Either way, it is far greater than the actual Defense Department budget.

Back to my point, we've seen the military budget cut by only three percent, with the vague potential of another three percent cut. A total of six percent cutback to our military spending. Ooo, ahh, impressive you think until you look at other programs that have gotten the ax. Welfare has been a persistent target of budget cuts, and suffered more than twelve percent budget cuts over the past ten years. NIH has suffered cuts of 3.5%, then one percent over the past four years. NASA is decimated. And now they're looking at cutting SS and Medicare benefits through a combination of COLA adjustments and raising eligibility. Those cuts would amount to far more than six percent of those programs budgets over the next ten years.

But the military saw its budget raised this year, as it has for every year for the past decade and beyond. Yes, it gets a tiny trim here or there. But to say that the military budget is sharing the sacrifice is flat out absurd. Military spending is well over fifty five percent of our budget. The wars we're in are not defensive wars, but rather wars of empire. To continue to cut social and domestic programs while continuing to grow our military budget is insane and will lead to our collapse just as surely as the USSR's insane military spending led to their collapse.

So please, drop the notion that the military is somehow sharing in our sacrifice. Our military needs to become a true defensive force, not a force for offense and empire building. I think that, given our gross and needless military buildup over the past sixty years, a fifty percent decrease in military spending would not be unreasonable. But I also recognize that given our current political climate, that's not going to happen. It would be nice to see a more doable ten percent drop in military spending, but I doubt that is going to happen.

So what we have left now are token gestures by this administration on cutting the military, while continuing to balance the budget and solve the debt crisis by cutting social and domestic programs that benefit us. How fucked up is that?

No more cuts to domestic programs, period. We cannot afford them. It is time, past time, to start cutting our military budget. Otherwise we're going to collapse into riot and ruin as a country. The choice is that simple.