Is the U.S. Military Affordable
With the current economic situation in the U.S. as well as the rest of the word - the United States at some point is going to have to make cuts and the U.S. military will be subject to cuts. I am a proponent of a strong active and reserve military, but we are in a bit if a pickle with our national debt. Obviously cuts are not realistic until we are able to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq. I do propose that we only cut defense about across the board - there are many domestic programs in the U.S. that could either get the axe or cut significantly.
The question becomes, how big of a military do we need? What are our national security priorities?
Some argue that the united States spends more on defense then China, Russia and NATO combined, but I find the argument illogical. The U.S. should spend on national defense based on our priorities and not what other countries spend. What is logical are the threats posed by others. I for one would not go to war with China over Taiwan and I believe the South Koreans are more then capable of defending themselves against the North Koreans (the use of nuclear weapons by North Korea could change my position).
Do we need 10 active duty divisions, six independant brigadres and dozens of CS and CSS brigades? Do we need three active Marine Corps divisions (this is a hrad one to bring up since I am a former Marine)? Do we need 11 aircraft carriers and the large number of amphibious ships which are basically small carriers? Do we need so many fighter and attack aircraft in the USAF active duty inventory?
I have read much on this subject, but I am curious what others think.
Some agree with you, many do not.
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
...(actually, more than 900 if you count the hidden positions in non-DoD budgets) ... halving the military expenditures (including some coast guard, nuclear "energy" budget and DHS budget positions) would in itself suffice to eliminate the deficit in a few years.
First, that "hidden position" bit is dearly beloved of the left but it's not totally correct; the $782B figure in your pie chart is fairly accurate, possibly even a bit high because some DoD money is spent on pensions, retiree health care, public school offsets and many more such esoteric items; more social welfare than defense related...
Regardless of the accuracy of your figures, your suggestion is one approach. There are others. One such is to balance intake and outlay. The Federal Government takes in over 60% of governmental revenue nationwide but it makes less than 40% of all government outlays and disbursements. The imbalance is redistributed by grants and transfers to State and local governments who really spend almost 70% of total government outlays in the US.
Aside from being inefficient and a source of political corruption, that system is expensive as a huge bureaucracy at all three levels of government is involved with requesting, approving and transferring those funds. Just redistributing tax intakes to more accurately reflect governmental level responsibilities would save billions.
That doesn't even get into the national programs that are not the business of the Federal government and which probably should not exist in their current form, many of these so-called entitlements started small and logically but exist in their current forms solely to buy votes for Federal politicians.
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"Foreign aid (reportedly the favourite target for fiscal conservative rhetoric) is "only" and "small" and unable to contribute significantly to any cost savings...So-called "Defense" is a huge chunk and deserves to be called the reason for the federal budget deficit.
I agree in part -- our Foreign Aid budget needs to be larger and I have no problem with that increase coming from the Defense budget which I believe is excessively large and itself contributes to fraud, waste, abuse and corruption simply because its too big to be managed sensibly. Moving some funds from DoD to foreign aid and intel would lessen the need for military deployments and thus achieve synergistic savings.
However, while I agree that some reduction of the defense budget is logical, proper and overdue, the entire US Taxing and Budget process, profligate Federal politicians and runaway 'entitlements' are also in dire need of scrutiny. It is not nearly as simple as you seem to think and write.