Chris Hu said:
Nuvendil said:
Also, to toss into this discusion, the "military industrial complex" is not the main drive of the government's massive spending. I know this is unpopular, no one wants to hear it, and no President would ever say, but entitlements are the biggest driver, taking up well over half of our budget, around 60% if my math is right. Military spending is like almost as low as 1/8 of the total spending, and that's with us at war.
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But military spending is what could be cut the easiest the US spends more on the military then the next 10 countries combined.
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Well the size of our country and the number of obligations we have is part of that. I mean, for better or worse, we are expected to be the "tip of the spear" for NATO and often the UN. I don't like that, but that's the way it is.
And yes, I agree it should be reduced. However, if you cut it by 50%, that only reduces it by 250 billion. That's not going to stop the bleeding, only slow it a little bit. The reality is, there is no quick fix and people need to stop looking for one. The reality is we need a long term reevaluation of all our programs, especially entitlements, and start adjusting those. There are people right now taking entitlements from the government while being perfectly capable of living independent of them but the gov is horrible at keeping track of that. And there are other problems. The reality is, we need a large scale restructuring of our spending and that's going to take a lot longer than people think. People want the bleeding to stop in 2 years of a presidency, but that's impossible. We need patience and firm direction locked in.
