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

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (13057)	3/20/2012 10:44:09 AM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Respond to of 85487

If they stop the wars, or even cut defense spending to zero, toss in Homeland Security, the CIA, and anything that's even vauguly about defense or security or war or anti-terrorism, all to zero, we would still be running a deficit. The only way to pay out SS when the SS tax won't cover SS spending, and not have the inter-agency debt turn in to public debt, is to run a non SS surplus equal to, or greater than, the SS deficit. (In simpler terms to balance the budget or run a surplus). Ending the wars isn't going to cut the trillion and a half that you would need to do that. In fact ending the wars won't save a lot of money long term, they are winding down anyway. That's already baked in to the projections. You would have to cut spending and/or increase revenue by almost the same amount if you do end the wars immediately (which is impossible anyway, it takes time to redeploy). And even if the wars never ended (which of course isn't going to happen), they would be rather insignificant as part of our future ongoing fiscal problems.