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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Road Walker who wrote (177425)11/3/2003 7:21:29 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 1574493
 
What planet are you from? On this planet, veterans benefits, social security, almost all government spending is not discretionary.

Yes they are.

Its apparently we are using the word discretionary in different ways. By "discretionary" I don't mean easy to cut, or that it would be a good idea to cut it. I mean that it could be cut. If you want to debate whether or not a certain area of spending should be cut then maybe we can have that debate but even if I am convinced that spending on a particular program should not be cut, that doesn't mean that I think it is fundamentally different from other government spending that I might be more willing to cut or that politically and legally it would be easier to cut.

I know the standard way that the term discretionary is used when dealing with government spending is to refer to spending on things other then entitlements and debt. If you use discretionary that way then yes a large part of government spending is not discretionary but I don't consider that fact to be significant in this context. The nature of the spending is not very different the only real difference is the label that the spending is given.

Ever wonder where we would be right now if we hadn't started the Iraq debacle? How would the world be different? Better or worse?

That depends on what you mean by "started the Iraq debacle". If you mean where would we be if we hadn't invaded Iraq, then we would probably still face invading in the future. If you mean where would be if we had just dropped the whole idea of keeping Saddam in a box then I think we would be headed towards a worse situation then we are in now.

Tim
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