Republican foolishness
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 2/15/12 @ 8:40 am - Filed Under Featured, National Politics
President Obama has finally released his next budget proposal. He missed the required deadline; however, he finally did unveil it. The Democratic Senate still has not proposed a budget in three years…
The proposed budget continues the fiscal train wreck that George W. Bush started and President Obama accelerated. The truth of the matter is that all this budget does is SLIGHTLY limit the continual growth of the US Government.
The Pentagon will spend 530 billion dollars this year. This is an absurd amount of money and every veteran I have ever talked to agrees that we could cut military spending significantly with no reduction in military capability.
Our combat involvement in Iraq has ended. We are slowly (supposedly) drawing down in Afghanistan. Considering these two things the truth of the matter is that the Pentagon budget is still growing since some of its operations have ended or are being limited.
The United States of America is going broke. The last honestly balanced Federal Budget was in 1958. There is no proposal on the table right now that would EVER balance the Federal Budget. There is no doubt in my mind that we could easily cut military spending to maybe 400 billion dollars per year over the next five years with little real reduction in military might. We could get to 400 billion dollars by:
- Pulling all troops out of Afghanistan over the next six months. The government is corrupt and is not salvageable.
- Stop using drones to kill a few supposed terrorists and a larger number of innocent civilians. We should stop using our military overseas unless Congress declares an actual war.
- Cutting the nuclear submarine fleet in half. I served on a nuclear submarine and they are cool weapons. That being said they serve little purpose today. They were a product of the Cold War.
- Down size the military to the number of troops Panetta already proposed. This is a small and reasonable reduction.
- We should close most of our overseas military bases. We should keep the few that are truly needed. The rest should be closed unless the host country agrees to foot HALF of the costs. We are defending the rest of the world and the rest of the world damn well should pay us to defend it.
- We should hire a large number of auditors and we should aggressively audit the defense contractors. All that are found guilty of fraud should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
I could go on and on.
What REALLY gripes me is the Republicans who are whining and claiming that we are “hallowing out” the military. I am not sure what illegal drugs these Republicans are utilizing; however, they do not have a clue…
Mike
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6 Responses to “Republican foolishness”
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But Mike… we need the military to attack Iran, and stabilize Syria, and to give comfort to countries in the south pacific that fear China, and and and and…
:)
Mike, I do not think we are going broke, we are broke. When did Enron go broke; when it began cooking the books a few years prior to filing bankruptcy or when it officially filed bankruptcy?
The payroll tax cut is good only if the money is not reimbursed by the general budget. In many ways there have been continued payroll tax holidays since the early 70’s. Earned income Tax Credit is a direct result of the increased payroll taxes between 1969 and 1972, the only difference is it wen to low income workers, not all workers. This single tax credit has added over $1 Trillion to the national debt.
Politicians have made us all fat, dumb and happy. Now no one wants their sacred crumbs taken away.
Defense spending used to be 25% of the total budget, but with the advent of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Food Stamps, the defense budget is actually smaller in real dollars. It would be nice to think that Defense cuts would actually make a difference, but I believe they would have as much difference in putting out a roaring house fire by spitting on it.
I believe we really need to eliminate Medicare and Social Security and return the 15.3% payroll tax to the people. In addition, we need to raise the federal income tax to begin paying down the debt. We also need to return education to the states. The Department of Energy is a joke and due to Carter’s executive order prohibiting recycling nuclear waste, we have wasted billions on a nuclear repository with nothing to show and now have every single nuclear operator suing the DOE for breach of contract for not removing spent fuel from all commercial nuclear sites. On top of this, the DOE along with the NRC has approved the construction of a nuke plant in Georgia with no means or plans to store the spent fuel.
There are no plans or designs to fix a single line item in the budget. Mike, we are hosed!!
I thought budget and spending was the job of Congress, namely the House of Representatives. Who’s running THAT circus?
Hi Mike,
Thanks for drawing attention to this issue! As further proof, as of December 2011, government debt has actually surpassed U.S. GDP. Certainly problematic.
I’m curious if you’ve considered how the continual increase in government spending actually decreases the economic freedom of Americans? At the Economic Freedom Project, we’ve produced a short 2 minute video showing how economic freedom is in the decline due to factors such as government spending and over-regulation.
I’d love to hear what you think of the video! Let me know and I’ll send you a link.
Thanks!
Mike
I agree with you Mike. However your view narrows to a bottleneck. I’m not sure the article(blog) fits the title. Our foolishness might be just as appropriate since the three parties all bear responsibility. Neocon being the third btw. Hard to hound on just Republicans, as tempting as it might seem, because Democrats support spending just as nicely as the expected drums from Rep’s. Obama, depite his recent plea to wait for the first act of war(sanctions) to work first, which is hardly ‘peaceful negotiations’, has been just as aggressive as Bush, spent more, prosecuted more. His attorney general is another thing altogether. He even too Gates as SecDef. I’ve read a lot of your material on this site, and I appreciate the effort. Don’t take my arguments the wrong way. I see this as ’static party cling’…or maybe a extended tweet before a comforting night of binge drinking. Just don’t end up like Mel Gibeson eh? ’slap on the back’
Mike,
Sure, go ahead and send me a link.
Mike