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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (221875)	1/24/2002 6:12:58 PM
From: rich4eagle	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769670

During the cold war half our budget or more was dedicated to bringing down the Soviet Union and it stood at $280 billion. That means about 140 billion was for everything else. And there at least 50 billion of waste in that number. Well, the Soviet Union is gone so that number could be reduced by at least half say 70 billion. In addition worldwide spending for defense for the rest of the world dropped from 1.2 billion to 800 billion from 1995 thru 1999 and has dropped even more. Our share of total worldwide defense expenditures increased from 31% in 1995 to 36% in 1999. Russia has stated they are our friends as our President has stated that Russia is our bud. China the only real threat has about 24 ICBM's capable of reaching the US and spends about 20 billion a year on defense. So if we cut out half the fat which is about 100 billion that saves 50 billion and we cut out 33 per cent of the waste on Strategic Spending about another 20 billion or so and cut out all the duplicative procurement functions of the services about another 30 or billion and shut down some of the bases that serve no purpose another 30 billion or so we can easily cut 120 billion out of the budget and increase warfighting capability and still have plenty of waste. What we are going to do with the extra 68 billion in 02 and 03 is create quite a pork barrel around the beltway