Yes, we are spending too much on defense. To quote from Forbes:
Not counting the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defense budget is expected to be $553 billion in 2012, up from $549 billion in 2011. That outlay currently represents 19% of the entire federal budget and over 50% of U.S. discretionary spending...
That Middle East war, of course, adds another $120 billion, so now we are way over 50% of so called discretionary (everything minus social security medi-whatever and equivalent and interest on the national debt) spending. Here was the Federal outlay in 2010:
On the surface, the Department of Defense portion already is alarming. The truth of the matter is that it is even worse, for the real expenditure is:
Thus, in reality, we are spending nearly twice what is frequently quoted as the DOD budget. Thus, the military swallows about two-thirds of non-entitlement money to run our entire government.
During those Cold War days when there was a real threat of the Soviet Union we were spending far less. Today, with a rag-tag bunch (say, maybe 1000 really bad) terrorists, with the world order not at all threatened, we are misappropriating much more. We have eleven Navy task forces (and, therefore, eleven active aircraft carriers--more than the entire world combined--China has none, Russia has a relic more than a quarter century old and the UK all of one), and each reportedly costs $4.5 billion to annually operate. So add on to my $50 billion savings of bringing our troops from foreign soil another close to $50 billion here.
Yet, we are building a new fleet of super carriers, the first, to be called the USS America (left), now in construction, to cost $14 billion. Why? Especially as an aircraft carrier is today obsolete. Okay, finish this last one (posturing is all you can do today to scare enemies anyway), and mothball (actually, as it will cost about a billion dollars to decommission each battle group, maybe try to sell them to China and Russia--and if this scares you, then, maybe Saudi Arabia, Japan, Singapore, etc.) at least nine of the 12, bringing the total annual savings now close to $100 billion when you include bringing our troops on foreign soil back home, and having them transition into environmental/energy specialists. By the way, I miscounted: we today have 516,273 of our military in 150 countries. Why?
Oh, I should answer some of my whys with a simple, because the Military-Industrial Complex (watch President Eisenhower's--he was a general, too--warning of half a century ago) controls Congress and the White House. You can't argue against freedom. But it's more than that, as every state has some military presence. Just hint at closing a navy task force base, and see what happens. We are largely the problem. Amen.
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