Does the USA need a perestroika?

[ckmlb]

HappySqurriel said:

ckmlb said:

HappySqurriel said:

Although the United States really needs major reductions in government spending (after all the municipal, state and the federal governments are all spending far more than they take in with little benefit for their citizens) I'm not so sure I would follow the example of the USSR ...

The place to start from that is to cut salaries of people in the house and senate and the president and after that cut the fat out of military spending in useless projects and such, like the F-22 and European missile defense were recently cut.

Being that the #1 expense of government today is some form of wealth transfer don't you think it would make sense to start there? While military spending is insane due to the United States being in two wars and having the most advanced military, it is still only 20% of the federal budget; which should demonstrate how moronically high the rest of the spending is.

Wealth transfer as in welfare and such programs? In that case, no I don't think it should be there.

2009 US federal budget as requested by the Bush administration:

• $644 billion - Social Security.
• $408 billion - Medicare.
• $224 billion - Medical and the SCHIP
• $360 billion - Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending

Combined those are 1.63 trillion dollars.

Meanwhile, the budget for the Department of Defense is $515.4 billion and the War on Terror is $145.2 billion, combined that is 660.6 billion dollars. While the spending on what you call welfare transfer is high the spending on defense is pretty high. Plus those figures do not include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama administration appropriated 130 billion for the Iraq war in 09 plus those costs do not include equipment lost in the field and damaged.