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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs

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To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (34729)	4/9/2009 8:20:55 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) of 71588

The war costs are still military spending (as people arguing for military cuts where very eager to point out when Bush was president and the war looked like it might drag on for some time). The war spending was projected to wind down anyway, perhaps not in FY2010 but in another year or so after that), so at least from FY2011 or 12 on it would be reasonable to say it wasn't an Obama cut, but rather an already projected cut, but still total military spending will decline. There really isn't anything bad about the idea of military spending going down after a war ends, but its still a decline. In any case you didn't address my point at all. My point applies equally well if we do exclude the war costs. My post correctly stated that there would be a decline in spending from future projections, and that this is often called a cut. If you really "don't think so" about that statement I don't see why. I can see stating that you don't think what's called a cut should be based on projections of future spending, but I didn't say it should be counted that way only that it often is. Your point about excluding spending on the war, in addition to being a somewhat debatable itself, is irrelevant to the issue. Whether or not you exclude the war spending the Gates/Obama FY 2010 spending projections are lower than the previous FY 2010 spending projections, so they are a cut in that sense. Whether the issue of calling something a cut or not should depend on previous spending baselines and projections or only actual previous spending depends on what you consider a cut. Really neither position is flat out wrong. The term "cut" or even "budget cut" isn't that precise of term. Personally I'm partial to comparing future spending to previous actual spending rather than to earlier projections of future spending, but I wasn't arguing for the latter method, just pointing out that its frequently used, esp. when social programs are reigned in.

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