Was a Superbowl Flyover Worth the $

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

Chinese defense budget is listed at $60billion, and the Russian defense budget is listed at $75 billion, so maybe we set our defense spending at 2 times the sum of China and Russia. or $270 billion. That would be a savings of $620 Billion,or nearly half the deficit.

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.