White House Expects Deficit to Spike to $1.65 Trillion

North Korea spends 38% of it's GDP on military...in addition to subsidies from other countries.

China's is at 4.8%.

I don't dispute that there are cuts that can (and/or should) be made to defense spending. But many of you are taking a very myopic view of what the military does.

As one example, trade costs go up significantly if a shipping company has to protect itself/cover its losses from piracy/theft on the high seas or extortion through choke points. You may not want to pay for a navy, but it will also cost significantly more than that to pay for increased trade, oil, etc.

Besides the 7000k number is bogus. Let's assume we can make cuts to, say, China levels (4.8% of GDP). That makes it 4.8% * $14.8T or $700B. That makes the DoD budget ~30-35% of projected income taxes. If you don't pay 21k a year in federal taxes (and I assume many of you don't) you're not coming close to that $7000/yr level. For those paying 9k a year in federal taxes, you're already at that 3000/yr level.

The bigger question for me is: if 15.3% of my wages are already going to medicare/medicaid/ss, why are $608B ($1438B in outlay - $830B in receipts) being paid in addition to those taxes? You want to cut the military in half, and $7000/family is too high for a world-wide-capable professional volunteer military, but you're not bringing up 15% PLUS ~$6000 per family to go to SS/M/M? Seriously?

 

I think the idea is to cut OFFENSE and leave the DEFENSE.

I don't see how cutting back to Clinton era levels of defense spending is going to somehow make us weak. We're not only the strongest nation in the world, militarily, but the strongest by a longshot.

 

I generally don't do this, but I'd like to bump to hear someone back up their opinion on it. Denny, Maris, Mook, bluefrog?

To reiterate, I'm not averse to cutting back to Clinton levels if you cut back to Clinton missions. If you want to go isolationist and bring the troops home, the budget will automatically be cut reflecting that. If you want to keep sending our people into harm's way, you gotta pay for them. And the cost of a US troop is far less than paying the cost for a UN troop (US funds ~30% of UN budget) for the same job.

 

Clinton era levels were enough for us to get into two simultaneous wars, and we sure seemed prepared. If there was any one real problem, it was a choice to go for electronic surveillance over human operatives, and that sort of mix seems like it could be adjusted.

The lesson (I) learned from Iraq is that our forces were ill prepared for the task that followed mission accomplished (and it was accomplished, Iraq govt. and military wiped out). We didn't need soldiers and pilots and sailors so much as we needed engineers and policemen and folks suited for helping set up infrastructure institutions.

I don't want our troops in harm's way for decades at a time. The three week variety, every once in a great while and done right, seems like what our posture should be.