US defense budget could be trimmed by 1 trillion $ over the next 10 years

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

dead0man's job relies on massive military spending and unneeded boondoggles, of course he supports bloating the military budget.

Haha.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

that's a Sept.10 mindset. Be careful.

Yes...because we need a trillion dollars to find some 65 year old man hiding in a cave...

We spend 1 trillion a year on defense.  It's cutting spending by 200 billion dollars a year...Maybe I should put it in a way you would understand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9kXPTwIO08

That's way too little a cut. We need to at least reduce it to 200 billion dollars a year rather than just by that amount.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

dead0man's job relies on massive military spending and unneeded boondoggles, of course he supports bloating the military budget.

If you want to cut the budget so far that the HQs for (from wiki) space operations (such as military satellite), information operations (such as Information warfare), missile defense, global command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR), global strike and strategic deterrence (the United States nuclear arsenal), and combating weapons of mass destruction....no longer need secure communications with the outside world, then yeah, my job is a boondoggle and pure military waste*.

Sounds good, cut all that unnecessary crap.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

It is hurting our security. We won't be able to afford missiles or defense systems anymore and Al-Qaida will crash a plane into the Sears Tower.

So $550 bil isn't enough to stop Al-Qaeda but $650 bil--$100 of that deemed by the Defense Department themselves to useless and wasteful--is?
s

How long till Hannity proclaims this is hurting our national security?  And McCain toolishly agrees?

And then they complain about the deficit?

It is hurting our national security. I understand some of the people here who want military cuts, but $1 trillion being cut from our defense is going way too far.

Explain why.

Given how much we spend, I echo Franzl's question to TC.......whose answers I respect.

I understand those who say we're overspending on defense, but I can't support a $1 trillion cut because that's far too extreme. I don't know exactly how much we're spending right now, but I'm certain that $1 trillion represents a very large portion of our defense, and such a large, sudden cut in our defense is too risky.

The article that started this thread says we'll spend about $650 billion this year.   Assuming it doesn't increase yearly (which it does, but let's just say that it doesn't), that's $6.5 trillion a decade.  So $1 trillion in cuts is 15%.

Not too much IMO.

Thank you. So, it's actually cutting $100 billion from the $650 billion annual budget?

On average.  I imagine the amount cut would increase yearly to fit the budget's yearly increase (i.e. $35 billion cut this year, $45 bil cut next year, $350 bil cut in the final year, etc)

Oh, ok.

The defense budget should be at least halved.

Absolutely not! Now, that's going too far.

That's not going anywhere near far enough.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

I'd probably oppose this being big on defense. Tackle the deficit by, modestly, raising taxes on the primary beneficiaries of that supply-side nonsense, I would

You seriously support keeping defense spending at its current level....really?

Aye if it meant jobs, jobs, jobs. Unemployment is high enough as it is and it depresses me unutterably

Dave, that's a lot of money spent per job.

Perhaps when our businesses start fulfilling their moral obligations to provide us work our government's may not need to spend so much. It's taking all my inner strength not to become some "lefty" agitating for protectionist populism and limits on the free movement of capital

And the G20 was waste of ruddy time. At a time when its vital we stimulate demand for goods and services, and a new consensus is needed, they agree to all go off and pursue their own economic policies. The Crash came, we were told to spend, spend, spend and now its cut, cut, cut

There has got to be some place better than this because Earth is Hell

War and militarism are the absolute worst misallocations of resources imaginable.

Building bombs or blowing people up are not real jobs; they are parasitic, destructive activities.