Obama Sharpens Pentagon Ax

The money from those cuts that Gates so bravely suggested was to be spent on other Pentagon projects, as I recall rather than not being spent at all.

The Pentagon will have to learn to do more with less just like everyone else. There should be no “sacred cows” in this matter.

Now there’s a part of government so big and rife with actual waste, fraud and abuse, it could stand the Republican machete. Of course, in this case, they just want to throw good (taxpayer) money after bad. What a bunch of miserable, lying hypocrites.

The brave and courageous Ryan plan adds to Pentagon spending.
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House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) “Path to Prosperity” not only fails to put defense cuts on the table; it actually wants defense spending to continue growing in real terms. Ryan’s “deficit reduction plan” calls for a $22 billion increase in defense for FY 2012, and he wants to increase the baseline budget by another $60 billion over the next four years. This means that in FY 2016, DOD would receive $642 billion. Ryan’s proposal would have us spend nearly $6.5 trillion on defense—exclusive of war costs—over the next decade.

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And to my point about about the Gates cuts –
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How did the person New York Times columnist David Brooks praised for his courageous leadership and for setting a standard of seriousness miss this? Apparently Ryan was taken in by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s claims that he has already proposed $178 billion in savings in defense spending. These were not real cuts. Gates plowed $100 billion of his “savings” back into the budget for other programs while the remaining $78 billion merely reduced projected growth in the defense budget.

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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/04/ryan_defense_korb.html

Military spending makes up 20% of the budget… that’s more than total discretionary spending . It has to be considered in spending cuts along with an increase in taxes for upper income brackets!!

Current Military spending, after adjustments for inflation, are reaching the highest levels since world II. This is absolute nonsense!!

If we go to war we all must pay.

1) Reinstitute the draft. All men and women from 18-35 with no exemptions. The ADA has agreed that there is a job for everyone, be it clerk or soldier or server in the mess halls. No more outside contractore fighting our wars for profit..

2) Put a war tax on every American who’s freedoms and rights are being defended in these wars.

3) Put a confidence or no confidence system in place whereby the American voters could decide to remove our country from the war with an option to renew process every nine months. (Long enough to have a baby should be long enough to decide whether to continue a war)

Ten years in Afghanistan and Pakistan and look at where we are today.

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>> Put a confidence or no confidence system in place
>> whereby the American voters could decide to remove
>> our country from the war with an option to renew
>> process every nine months.
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We have this… we held elections and people elected a democratic president who wanted to shut gitmo and end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also elected members of congress who didn’t want to end these wars.

On the whole the American voters got what they voted for.

Gadsbys: Totally rational, which is why your idea will never fly.

2) Put a war tax on every American who’s freedoms and rights are being defended in these wars.

Just what freedoms and rights are being defended in our current wars?

Yes, its funny how quickly people forget what a representative democracy is, perhaps we should all take a refresher course in government at our local high schools…wait that’d require funding public schools, obviously we can’t afford that.

i agree yogi. it’s just that is the way we have been sold AfPak and Iraq for 11 years now. We do need to defend our shores. But we need to be a lot more clear about who the real enemies are.

My perspevtive is that hunger, poor education and irrational fear are the real enemies and we are spending our dollars fighting the wrong wars.

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>> My perspevtive is that hunger, poor education and
>> irrational fear are the real enemies and we are
>> spending our dollars fighting the wrong wars
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And your views were represented with your vote in the last election. They are not, apparently, held by the majority of those who voted.

There is not indication that the majority of voters in this country are unhappy with the course our country is taking with regard to the wars. You and I may disagree with this and we have the right to peacefully persuade others to our point of view, but in a democratic society the will of the electorate is the deciding factor.

As any conservative, in the traditional sense of the word, would know- the only way to insure a modest government is to make the people pay for the services they get. IOW, tell the people that, in order to pay for defense- the largest component of discretionary spending- we must raise taxes until such time that we can end end the wars, close overseas bases and curb weapon production. If so, I would guarantee that government spending will drop precipitously and most of our soldiers would be home soon.
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There are almost no conservatives on Capitol Hill.

Military spending makes up 20% of the budget..
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And that’s due to some convenient accounting. If you take total defense spending- homeland security, veterans, construction, weapons, the wars, etc- and contributions to defense from other departments- Energy spends about $20 billion on nuclear weapons, for instance- then discount trust funds- money raised and spent separately from income tax, such as Social Security- you find that defense accounts for nearly half of all Federal funds spent.
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http://www.warresisters.org/sites/default/files/FY2012piechart-color.pdf