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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (130036)	12/21/2000 1:53:16 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1570940

The budget people break it out the way I presented it. They refer to the items that you call non defense as medicaid, medicare, SS and net interest. If you are comapring the burden of spending of defense spending to non defense spending then the way the "budget people" break it out does not make much sense unless they are deliberatly seeking to distort the issue. I guess seperating the interest payments makes sense (after all some of that interest was from defense spending), but social security, medicare, medicaid and such are all non-military governement spending. The etitlements are also the area of government spending that has seen the greatest growth. Finally they already get $293 billion a year....my God that has got to be bigger than the national budget for most of the countries in the world. Which is down even before adjusted for inflation. The type of increases I would support would still leave the defence budget well off its peak in inflation djusted dollars and even further off in terms of % od the budget or % of GNP or GDP. One final comment and this is getting somewhat personal but Republicans are noted for being fiscally conservative until it comes to the military. I just don't get it because that's where the biggest waste has been since WWII. Some Repulbicans argue for a small increase in a defense budget that has been slashed. Many democrats aregue for continueing large increases in social programs that have been getting bigger and bigger for a long time. You can argue the merits of each category of spending but the Republican position here is far more fiscally conservative. As for biggest waste I disagree with you, but I don't see how either of us can really get solid evidence to support our positition on that. Tim