Quote:
Originally Posted by saden1
The current military budget is insanely enormous and the fundamental question is does it need to be as big as it is? A 480 billion dollar budget (pay attention to the expenditure break down on page 15)? One often hears the defence budget relative to the GDP, but what you really should be hearing about is the budget relative to federal revenue.
I don't think it's wise to lump Iraq and Bosina as they are fundamentally different in principle (war vs peach keeping) and budgetary requirement. I would even go further and say that we alone should not be shouldering the burden when it comes to peace keeping mission. The fact that we have such a huge budget gives other nations a free pass to delegate their responsibility to us. Perhaps Europe is too smart or poor?
Finally i want to make it clear that the defence budget should be dynamic. There should be a base budget and money should be allocated based on need. Currently, the default budget even when we are not in time of war is enormous for reasons not apparent to me. |
It's huge now because it was starved to death in the previous Administration and needed to be rebuilt.