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

To: tejek who wrote (175423)	9/26/2003 6:46:44 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577911

I don't care. Our defense budget is too high. What standard due you use too determine too high or not too high? Mandatory budget items are not included with Discretionary spending items like defense. They make up a separate line item on the report but they are still non defense government spending. You can break down government spending in to as many categories as you want but it doesn't change its nature as spending by the government. Also in many ways defense spending is more mandatory then entitlements. It is possible to eliminate entitlement programs by changing the law. At least a low level of defense spending is absolutely vital to our country. The most basic part of government is to be able to protect it citizens against foreign (mostly military and intelligence spending) and domestic (police, FBI ect.). Other program can be good ideas, even great ideas and can be very important for many people but they are in the end less vital then the ability to keep the peace and protect our nation from foreign threats. That's only because so much of the budget is not discretionary. Mandatory is 58%; discretionary 42% Exactly. You want to make conclusions about government spending while excluding over half of federal government spending from consideration. Those projections are completely off now that the Iraqi war is soaking up so much more of our revenues. You think it will soak off this much for 5 years? Also the reconstruction money is not defense spending only the actual operations and maintaince spending for the war. A large part of that was using up ammo fuel and other supplies at a high rate during the initial phase of the war. We aren't using up a lot of $1.5mil + cruise missiles or sending hundreds of tanks across hundreds of miles of desert at high speed any more. The pay for the soldiers would have to be paid anyway (except the hazardous duty pay and the extra pay for reserves that are called up). Also military spending isn't the only thing that goes up faster then anticipated. Non-defense spending increases faster then projections all the time. With the new prescription drug benefit it will probably keep happening, most likely at an even higher rate then normal. Its still very likely that the defense spending increase over the next 5 years will be less the increase in non defense spending (measured either by a percentage or in dollars). Tim