What would you cut?

blackascoal said:
Is this a trick question?
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What a great chart.

People forget that what exploded our military budget was the arms race of the 70's & 80's. And it worked - it bankrupted the Soviet Union, causing it to collapse from within.

Only problem is that we didn't learn the lesson of what happened to them as we were "defeating" them....
 
Onceler said:
What a great chart.

People forget that what exploded our military budget was the arms race of the 70's & 80's. And it worked - it bankrupted the Soviet Union, causing it to collapse from within.

Only problem is that we didn't learn the lesson of what happened to them as we were "defeating" them....
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I agree with you brother. It's the picture that speaks a thousand words.

I also agree with you on the lessons we haven't learned.

I was serious when I asked if this is a trick question. Nothing could be more obvious.
 
blackascoal said:
country-distribution-2011.png


Is this a trick question?
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The chart may be technically correct, but it is missing one salient point. Europe has been allowed to decrease its spending on the military because it essentially lived under the umbrella of protection from the USA. Now you may say that isn't money well spent, and I would actually agree with you. I say FUCK europe. Let them defend themselves. Same with Canada. It is easy for them to spend elsewhere because they know the US of A will always have their back
 
You could cut the entire defense budget and we are still $700 billion in deficit. That is deficit. You could repeal ALL of the Bush tax cuts. Every single one of them and we are still $600 billion in deficit.

So where else you guys gonna cut? We just cut your favorite things. No National Defense. And NO Bush tax cuts. None. Still running deficits. Now where you wanna cut?
 
FactsRStubborn said:
You could cut the entire defense budget and we are still $700 billion in deficit. That is deficit. You could repeal ALL of the Bush tax cuts. Every single one of them and we are still $600 billion in deficit.

So where else you guys gonna cut? We just cut your favorite things. No National Defense. And NO Bush tax cuts. None. Still running deficits. Now where you wanna cut?
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They are so inept at finance, this is skipping completely over their heads. They have been told by their masters, that if we just didn't have the pesky military to pay for, and could repeal Bush's tax cuts for the "rich," all our problems would be solved. The problem is, even if we completely dismantled our military (which would be insane), and even if we repealed the Bush tax cuts.... AND raised the top marginal rate back up to 91%, like it was in the liberal glory days... it STILL would not offset the amount we are overspending. Not to mention, besides not solving the problem, we would then have no national defense, and no money to generate prosperity and jobs. I guess we could have another stimulus, but what can we expect from that?

It's also important to note, every year, Congress holds a VOTE on the Defense budget. Democrats have had enough control over Congress, they could have made whatever cuts they wanted, and the Republicans lack the votes to prevent it. Same with the Bush tax cuts. What these dishonest fucks want to claim, is that it's all Republicans fault we spend what we do on the military, or that we still have the Bush tax cuts. Last I checked, Democrats still get to vote in Congress. Many of these Democrats live in districts where there is a large military base or government contractor, and they can't seem to find it within themselves to make these draconian cuts, because the people would boot them out of office if they did. So they continue to parade around whining that Republicans won't let them cut the military budget.

It's funny, they had the political power to ram through Obamacare without a single Republican vote, but they are unable to gut the defense spending or repeal the Bush tax cuts. It's not because they lacked Republican support, we know that, because they lacked Republican support for Obamacare, but passed it anyway. So what gives, Democrats? Why haven't you defunded the military and repealed the tax cuts? ANSWER: It would be political suicide.
 
Dixie said:
They are so inept at finance, this is skipping completely over their heads. They have been told by their masters, that if we just didn't have the pesky military to pay for, and could repeal Bush's tax cuts for the "rich," all our problems would be solved. The problem is, even if we completely dismantled our military (which would be insane), and even if we repealed the Bush tax cuts.... AND raised the top marginal rate back up to 91%, like it was in the liberal glory days... it STILL would not offset the amount we are overspending. Not to mention, besides not solving the problem, we would then have no national defense, and no money to generate prosperity and jobs. I guess we could have another stimulus, but what can we expect from that?

It's also important to note, every year, Congress holds a VOTE on the Defense budget. Democrats have had enough control over Congress, they could have made whatever cuts they wanted, and the Republicans lack the votes to prevent it. Same with the Bush tax cuts. What these dishonest fucks want to claim, is that it's all Republicans fault we spend what we do on the military, or that we still have the Bush tax cuts. Last I checked, Democrats still get to vote in Congress. Many of these Democrats live in districts where there is a large military base or government contractor, and they can't seem to find it within themselves to make these draconian cuts, because the people would boot them out of office if they did. So they continue to parade around whining that Republicans won't let them cut the military budget.

It's funny, they had the political power to ram through Obamacare without a single Republican vote, but they are unable to gut the defense spending or repeal the Bush tax cuts. It's not because they lacked Republican support, we know that, because they lacked Republican support for Obamacare, but passed it anyway. So what gives, Democrats? Why haven't you defunded the military and repealed the tax cuts? ANSWER: It would be political suicide.
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So, the logic seems to be this: we can't save the budget even if we eliminate defense, so why even address America's 2nd largest expenditure?

You're ridiculously partisan on this topic. You're basically just like any politician at the national level.

All your words on this thread do is illustrate the nature of this partisanship, and why it is a blockade to the kind of compromise that is desperately needed on the issue of cutting the budget.
 
FactsRStubborn said:
The chart may be technically correct, but it is missing one salient point. Europe has been allowed to decrease its spending on the military because it essentially lived under the umbrella of protection from the USA. Now you may say that isn't money well spent, and I would actually agree with you. I say FUCK europe. Let them defend themselves. Same with Canada. It is easy for them to spend elsewhere because they know the US of A will always have their back
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I appreciate the civility.

Europe isn't demanding that the US taxpayer protect it .. and the military/industrial complex spends/wastes shitloads of taxpayer dollars on places far removed from any protection of Europe.

Nobody, not even the Iraqi's, either pushed nor asked us to attack Iraq and thus throw away countless taxpayer dollars and have billions just go missing .. all of which resulted in empowering Iran which gives us "reason" to spend trillions of dollars more chasing ghosts.

How much has Afghanistan cost? What did we get for it?

With all due respect, you're trying to blame Europe for a completely American problem.
 
Onceler said:
What a great chart.

People forget that what exploded our military budget was the arms race of the 70's & 80's. And it worked - it bankrupted the Soviet Union, causing it to collapse from within.

Only problem is that we didn't learn the lesson of what happened to them as we were "defeating" them....
Click to expand...

It is because people didn't listen to Ike's warning of the coming military/industrial/political behemoth.

Dems in particular are willing to shout from the rooftops about defense cuts... but try cutting a defense contract or a base in a Dem's district and see how fast they change their tune. (Reps will obviously do the same, they just aren't as vocal about cutting defense)

Get rid of the wasteful admin to begin with. Start there. I bet you could cut 10% alone from defense overall just within admin.
 
Onceler said:
So, the logic seems to be this: we can't save the budget even if we eliminate defense, so why even address America's 2nd largest expenditure?

You're ridiculously partisan on this topic. You're basically just like any politician at the national level.

All your words on this thread do is illustrate the nature of this partisanship, and why it is a blockade to the kind of compromise that is desperately needed on the issue of cutting the budget.
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I've not said we couldn't cut defense. Where did I say that??? I've also not said we can't save the budget, but you idea to privatize Social Security has nothing to do with the budget. Social Security is not a part of the general budget, it is paid for out of the Social Security trust fund that WE PAY IN TO! Now the government does owe money to the fund, which they have plundered over the years, but privatization won't eliminate the responsibility to pay that back, it will still have to come out of the revenues as always, there is no way to eliminate that from the budget. It's like the interest on the debt, it's there and it comes right off the top, before anything else. When we discuss "cutting the deficit" we are specifically talking about cutting discretionary spending. Those things that we have a choice on, that we can either choose to fund or not to fund.

And as for this whole "spirit of compromise" bullshit, there is no compromise, we can either balance our budget or continue to amass debt. What the fuck do you mean "compromise?" There is no 'compromise' that allows us to keep spending more than we take in, yet balance our budget. We either fail or succeed at doing it, there is no in-between.
 
Dixie said:
I've not said we couldn't cut defense. Where did I say that??? I've also not said we can't save the budget, but you idea to privatize Social Security has nothing to do with the budget. Social Security is not a part of the general budget, it is paid for out of the Social Security trust fund that WE PAY IN TO! Now the government does owe money to the fund, which they have plundered over the years, but privatization won't eliminate the responsibility to pay that back, it will still have to come out of the revenues as always, there is no way to eliminate that from the budget. It's like the interest on the debt, it's there and it comes right off the top, before anything else. When we discuss "cutting the deficit" we are specifically talking about cutting discretionary spending. Those things that we have a choice on, that we can either choose to fund or not to fund.

And as for this whole "spirit of compromise" bullshit, there is no compromise, we can either balance our budget or continue to amass debt. What the fuck do you mean "compromise?" There is no 'compromise' that allows us to keep spending more than we take in, yet balance our budget. We either fail or succeed at doing it, there is no in-between.
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Hey, dopey - by compromise, I mean that both sides commit to making cuts to programs that are traditionally associated with "their" side. All we really hear are both sides clamoring for cuts to programs that aren't part of their agenda.

Your talk about defense cuts, while not taking them off the table, is really little more than caveats. Throughout the thread, and on other threads, you seem to be advocating a sort of permanent stimulus program for the military, even in areas where it is no longer needed.
 
Superfreak said:
It is because people didn't listen to Ike's warning of the coming military/industrial/political behemoth.

Dems in particular are willing to shout from the rooftops about defense cuts... but try cutting a defense contract or a base in a Dem's district and see how fast they change their tune. (Reps will obviously do the same, they just aren't as vocal about cutting defense)

Get rid of the wasteful admin to begin with. Start there. I bet you could cut 10% alone from defense overall just within admin.
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That's the worst part, and kind of a flaw in democracy, imo. Congresspeople are there to represent their districts, but in doing so, they often work against the national interest.
 
Onceler said:
Hey, dopey - by compromise, I mean that both sides commit to making cuts to programs that are traditionally associated with "their" side. All we really hear are both sides clamoring for cuts to programs that aren't part of their agenda.

Your talk about defense cuts, while not taking them off the table, is really little more than caveats. Throughout the thread, and on other threads, you seem to be advocating a sort of permanent stimulus program for the military, even in areas where it is no longer needed.
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Hey dopey, it doesn't matter about "our side" or "their side" when it comes to balancing the budget, we either DO or we DON'T! It should be a 'given' that everything is on the table, and nothing is too 'sacred' to look at or consider. With that said, there are things we do that if we suddenly stopped doing, would cause a great many people to lose jobs. The FIRST priority we should have, is to save as many jobs as possible, and not effect economic hardship on people or communities, through some short-sighted knee-jerk approach. I am reading people from "your side" in this thread, who think we should eliminate military funding altogether! I don't know that they are joking about that, I think some of them are dead serious, they would just as soon see the entire military defunded. My only point has been, we can make 'wholesale cuts' to the military, but it's going to have a major ramification in terms of the economy and jobs. That's not saying we shouldn't do some cutting, or that I don't think we should cut military funding because it's like a stimulus.

If we have the choice to cut out government grants to universities for the study of something none of us give a shit about, then we effect a handful of people at some university, who won't get their grant. Wouldn't that be a better place for us to start? Don't you believe we could probably find several hundred billion in cuts we could make, by eliminating stupid shit we don't need to be funding or doing? Things that don't really effect working-class families or their jobs? Things that won't totally devastate the economy of some community or town? If we streamlined the postal service, we would eliminate some postal jobs, and some people may be inconvenienced a little, but it won't dramatically effect economies and turn cities into ghost towns, like closing a military base. If we get rid of Head Start or free school breakfasts, is that going to effect a lot of people dramatically? Not really... some people will lose jobs, some people will be inconvenienced, but this program is not essential to prosperity in the community. We can live without it.

All of it can be put on the table and discussed rationally and reasonably, but this idea that we can slash the defense budget dramatically, and it won't hurt a thing to do so, is ludicrous. If we do something like that, it will instantly mean the loss of thousands of jobs, and that would grow into possibly millions of jobs, as the economic ramifications were realized. There is just about nothing else you can touch in the budget that would have as profound an effect on jobs.
 
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Hey - dopey. Just about anything you cut that will have a significant impact on the budget, because it's a significant amount of money, will affect a lot of people.

Unversity grants? Are you serious? A few posts ago, you were ridiculing the idea that defense cuts could really impact things, and saying we all had a problem with math...and your alternative is cutting university grants?

This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. You can't have a serious conversation about budget cutting without talking about significant changes to the 2 biggest behemoths - SS & defense.

Cutting grants - jeez...
 
Onceler said:
Hey - dopey. Just about anything you cut that will have a significant impact on the budget, because it's a significant amount of money, will affect a lot of people.
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This just isn't true, and that's my point! An impact, yes.. on people.. yes, but to what degree? How many people? It depends. There are certainly many things in the defense budget that do not involve a lot of people, yet cost a lot of money. There are also things that cost a lot of money, but also provide a lot of people a livelihood in a community. Much the same can be said for "social programs" when you get down to it... there are some of really good programs we fund, that we should probably fund even more, because of the benefit we realize from it. Literacy education for instance. But there are tons of things we are doing that benefit very few, and waste a lot of money paying federal managers and agents to basically fill out forms. We have so many federal government agencies, they literally fall and trip over each other in day to day operations. It's absolutely mind-boggling at the amount of redundancy and waste we have in federal bureaucratic bullshit.

Unversity grants? Are you serious? A few posts ago, you were ridiculing the idea that defense cuts could really impact things, and saying we all had a problem with math...and your alternative is cutting university grants?
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No, it's not an 'alternative' to defense cuts. I didn't say that. You aren't listening. Tens of billions are given every year to universities to study this that and the other... Neil Bortz used to have a long list of some, they were all embarrassingly stupid. Why are our tax dollars going to fund this stuff? Why are we funding art exhibits? What "effect" will it have on everyday people, if we stop doing that stuff? If we cut these idiotic things that we really don't have any business doing, FIRST... BEFORE we start talking about massively cutting the military budget, which WILL cost jobs and effect economies?

This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. You can't have a serious conversation about budget cutting without talking about significant changes to the 2 biggest behemoths - SS & defense.
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Well first of all, are we talking about the budget, or national expenditures? I thought we were talking about balancing the budget, and what cuts would we make to the budget. IS THAT NOT THE TOPIC? Social Security is an expenditure, but not part of the budget. You can talk about privatizing it, and that needs to be done so that politicians will keep their hands off the money, and people can be assured they will have a retirement pension in the future. SS is going broke, largely because politicians have borrowed from the trust fund to do all kinds of things, like fund the Cowboy Poetry Festival. But this has nothing to do with the general budget or discretionary spending, or defense spending. Social Security is not even on the same table, other than the money the federal government owes the trust fund, which is to be paid back over time. There are some thing we fund through Medicare that come out of the general budget I think, as discretionary spending, and we could look at those for cuts as well, but that's not really what you were talking about.

"Behemoths" is kind of misleading. Defense spending is the largest chunk of our spending, but that includes a whole lot of things we can't do anything about really... Veterans benefits, etc. Things we are already committed to and doing, that we can't cut and have no control over. You also need to take into consideration, we're talking about the primary purpose and duty of a federal government, to protect and defend the people. It's reasonable this would be, and should be our greatest expense. Nothing else our Federal Government is Constitutionally charged with doing, trumps Defense.
 
blackascoal said:
I appreciate the civility.

Europe isn't demanding that the US taxpayer protect it .. and the military/industrial complex spends/wastes shitloads of taxpayer dollars on places far removed from any protection of Europe.

Nobody, not even the Iraqi's, either pushed nor asked us to attack Iraq and thus throw away countless taxpayer dollars and have billions just go missing .. all of which resulted in empowering Iran which gives us "reason" to spend trillions of dollars more chasing ghosts.

How much has Afghanistan cost? What did we get for it?

With all due respect, you're trying to blame Europe for a completely American problem.
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Whether they demand it or not is irrelevant. The fact remains that they benefit from it. And I don't argue that there isn't waste in the defense budget. I would argue however that national defense is one of the things the US Constitution authorizes the Congress to spend money on. Everything else is not (subject for another argument).

My point is that you could cut out all of the defense budget (which I know nobody is advocating) and eliminate ALL of the Bush tax cuts (not just for the RICH) and we would still be running deficits of almost $600 billion a year. So the question becomes what are we going to cut?

Additionally, it isn't the trajectory of defense spending that is bankrupting this country. It is the trajectory of welfare spending such as Social Security and Medicare. And make no mistake, they are welfare programs.
 
evince said:
how much of the budget is defense?
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During FY 2011, the federal government spent $3.60 trillion on a budget or cash basis, up 4% vs. FY 2010 spending of $3.46 trillion and up 20% versus FY2008 spend of $2.97 trillion. Major categories of FY 2011 spending included:
1st. Medicare & Medicaid ($835B or 24%)
2nd. Social Security ($725B or 20%),
3rd. Defense Department ($700B or 19%),
4th. non-defense discretionary ($646B or 19%),
5th. other ($465B or 12%) and
6th. interest ($227B or 6%).

Expenditures are classified as mandatory, with payments required by specific laws, or discretionary, with payment amounts renewed annually as part of the budget process. Expenditures averaged 20.6% GDP from 1971 to 2008, generally ranging +/-2% GDP from that level. The 2011 and 2010 spend were both 24.1% GDP, versus 2008 spend of 20.8% GDP.
 
FactsRStubborn said:
Whether they demand it or not is irrelevant. The fact remains that they benefit from it. And I don't argue that there isn't waste in the defense budget. I would argue however that national defense is one of the things the US Constitution authorizes the Congress to spend money on. Everything else is not (subject for another argument).

My point is that you could cut out all of the defense budget (which I know nobody is advocating) and eliminate ALL of the Bush tax cuts (not just for the RICH) and we would still be running deficits of almost $600 billion a year. So the question becomes what are we going to cut?

Additionally, it isn't the trajectory of defense spending that is bankrupting this country. It is the trajectory of welfare spending such as Social Security and Medicare. And make no mistake, they are welfare programs.
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"They BENEFITTED from it????????"

Do you have any idea what Iraq looks like today .. with countless numbers of their citizens dead for no reason other than the US was looking to profit from their deaths?

Your last sentence makes absolutely zero sense.
 
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