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Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33
Keep in mind the Chinese and Russian military folks aren't getting paid anywhere near their US counterparts. I would love to see their budget numbers if their personnel were paid at even 50% what ours are. Keep in mind the US military expenditures are roughly as follows:
Personnel: $ 138B (up 2.6% from FY '10)
Operations & Maint: $ 200B (up 8.5% from FY '10)
Family Housing: $ 1.8B (down 19% from FY '10)
MILCON: $ 16.9B (down 20% from FY '10)
R & D: $ 76.1 (down 5% from FY '10)
Procurement: $ 112B (up 8% from FY '10)
Iraq & Afghanistan: Approx $ 159B, can we scale back there. At this point probably yes. But Obama could make that happen on his own, and he hasn't shown much desire to do that.
You mention cutting the defense budget wouldn't hurt a single US citizen, how about the US citizens that serve in the military. I would argue that fixing SS/Medicare/Medicaid would be far less painful to its recipients than involuntarily separating a large chunk of the military personnel or forcing existing personnel to work with equipment that is not properly maintained.
We can't just shut our bases overseas, how will we project force if necessary? What message would this send to our allies around the world?
On the National Debt, if we stop defecit spending the debt goes down and so does the interest on the debt. And we better get moving on that before interest rates start creeping back up.
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I guess I thought that it would be clear I wasn't really suggesting an immediate 670 Billion dollar reduction in defense spending, but I was trying to show that our expenditures in defense are far above the rest of the world's. If we were to cut that deep that fast yes the pain would be unbearable for the economy, as well as world stability. We can though take a step back, take a breath and put a hold on R&D, look at other ways to cut back. As we should with Medicare/Medicaid/SS.
This country is going to be in for a major shock if we think we can spend 1Trillion more than we take in, and if we don't act responsibly now, even the military will take the types of hits you say it can't afford.