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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (8314)	2/6/2012 8:37:11 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

Sooooo, Obama's spending about right then? Didn't say that either. Or that its too little, or too much. What I did say is that security/force related spending is central to being a government, and that defense spending is declining over time as a percentage of the economy and as a percentage of government spending. In other words its not the problem. With deficits and debt like we have now, every large area of spending should expect cut backs, and that includes defense. But the real problem is entitlements. That's what needs to be "cut" (as always, in quotes because while it will be called a cut it isn't, just a decrease in the planed increase). Do we really need to defend Germany and japan? Germany and Japan are not a significant cost to us anymore. Force levels are much lower, and at their costs are subsidized by the local countries, bringing them home would cost in the short run, and probably not save in the long run. Closing the bases would reduce (although probably only very slightly at this point) our ability to project forces to certain areas. What we need to do to reduce military spending, isn't so much closing over seas bases (although bases should be closed in some cases, both in the US and in other countries), or cutting back equipment and R&D (equipment levels are already in serious decline), but 1 - Reduce manpower costs per person (at least from what it will otherwise be, not necessarily from what it is now), which has been going up and up. I'm not suggesting paycuts, but benefits have to be contained, and 2 - Fix the procurement mess, reduce the cost of getting new weapons systems developed, built and deployed (again this might be just a "reduction" from the increasing trend line, a better term would be "contain" the cost, although some actual reductions in some areas would be good). The defense budget is already facing cutbacks in growth even actual reduction. The rest of government not so much. And defense is starting out at about one fifth of federal spending (maybe a tenth of total US government spending), so I don't see that it should be the prime target. It should not be immune but the other 90% of government money spent in the US needs a lot more attention.