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

To: tejek who wrote (175229)	9/18/2003 12:27:50 PM
From: brian1501	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578173

However, if you look closely and take out the Mandatory budget items including Medicare, Medicaid and SS which are forced to go up due to the aging population, spending for non defense budget items declined. That's a disgrace. Hmmm, that statement strikes me as funny. How about we apply that logic to the other side: Well, if you took out the mandatory defense budget items (since that is a primary function of govt) including everything in said budget which is forced to go up due to the state of the world and the war on terror, then you have no defense increase either. <g> Brian

To: tejek who wrote (175229)	9/26/2003 2:28:18 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578173

Before 2002 non defense spending went up for years, no really decades at a much faster rate then defense spending. However, if you look closely and take out the Mandatory budget items including Medicare, Medicaid and SS which are forced to go up due to the aging population IMO such spending should not be taken out of the equation. It is non defense spending, and in fact includes the biggest non defense spending categories. spending for non defense budget items declined. That's a disgrace. No it didn't, those mandatory items are still non-defense. But then I recognize what you mean, take out all entitlements and over a two year period, when you exclude most non-defense spending, then non-defense spending went down. That might be somewhat unusual but it isn't a disgrace in fact it is a good thing, but not unfortunately something that is likely to last for very long. Worse, defense makes up nearly HALF of the discretionary portion of the budget. And you're crying that we are shorting ourselves in terms of defense. That's only because so much of the budget is not discretionary. be my guest but the statement "all non military expenditures have been cut" is simply false. Maybe a touch but that's all. No it is very false. "all non military expenditures" have increased just about every year since WWII, including the last two which you (but not I) apparently want to limit the discussion to. Also the projections in the pdf file you link to (thanks for the informative link BTW) show that spending for things other then the defense budget will grow faster then the defense budget to 2008. So non defense spending has grown much faster then defense spending for over a decade, and is projected to continue to grow faster (if no longer much faster) over the next 5 years. What is really out of control and what is really busting the budgets is the entitlement spending. Tim