[quote name='ddn3' timestamp='1298160665' post='4776497']
Everyone agrees that spending needs to be brought down, it's just a question of what spending. The Republicans have their own special interest which is well known (ie eliminate environmental and business regulation, more military spending, defunding abortion, Medicare and financial aid) etc.. The Democrats have their own interests too ofcoruse.. There will be a fight, and ultimately a compromise will be reached.. The overarching theme though is without comprehensive cutbacks on the military all of it won't matter. That 60 billion they cut from the budget, thats just 6 months in Afghanistan and if u include Iraq its comes out to just 3 months of funding for the occupation and wars.. Reality is they thought they would win the wars in 2-3 years but its stretched out to 10+ years..
It hasn't been 10 years yet (though it probably will go that long, and it's a minor point).
The rest is pretty accurate.
The link above was just to show that the military is budgeting itself at least whereas before it wasn't really concerned and just threw money around. A large problem with military spending is that it gets tied up for such long periods of time. It's really hard to just cut the spending outright without having a dramatic impact on an enormous number of people. A good example is them considering canceling the marine amphibious landing craft. It seems like an easy thing to cut, but when you've been working on designing the craft for 10 years expecting to get hundreds of orders and all of a sudden the buyer backs out a lot of people can lose jobs, which is probably going to be the case at General Dynamics.
It's a lot easier to decide to stop doing new stuff, but so much money is caught up in old stuff in the military budget, and it's a really difficult position to cut projects that have been in development for so long.
I do not envy the guys that have to deal with that budget.
edit: also a lot of military spending goes into cool research projects like the darpa grand challenge, darpa urban challenge, and the internet, which benefit the military in huge ways, but also result in a better way of life for the whole country.
not saying it can't be trimmed. Just that it's not as easy as, "yea... just cut stuff we don't need."
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I agree for the most part. It is sad and refreshing at the same time that the military and not Republicans are the ones making the hard choices to cut spending. This is the reason why I asked the question in the OP.