Originally Posted By gurgitoy2 "Are you sure there aren't three of YOU posting on LP!?" Well, he did bring up the Witches, so maybe they're rubbing off on him?
Originally Posted By fkurucz >>Yeah...right in the military budget!<< The sad thing is I believe that Social Security and Medicare will be put down before a dime is cut from the military budget. And I don't expect the social security tax to go away once that happens, it'll just be renamed to something like "Patriot" or "Defend America" tax. That will plug the budget deficit, just prepare to have your folks move in with you when they get old. An interesting anecdote: 30% of the graduating senior from our local high school sign up for the military. I don't know what the breakdown is bewteen males and females but I'm guessing the the lion's share are guys. So it's possible that half the guys are signing up (who need a draft, right?). For these guys it was either the military or a part time minimum wage job.
Originally Posted By ChurroMonster Rush Limbaugh used to call the US military a giant welfare program. This is the one thing I agree with him on. Why are my tax dollars paying the salaries of over 100,000 troops in Europe? What are they protecting us from? Shouldn't our defense budget go towards, I don't know, our actual national defense? The US can not afford to be an empire.
Originally Posted By DAR I'd rather have the military budget focus more on providing our soldiers with the best possible armor and equipment to keep them safe.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has done the math. As he points out, the only way to balance the budget by 2020, while simultaneously (a) making the Bush tax cuts permanent and (b) protecting all the programs Republicans say they won’t cut, is to completely abolish the rest of the federal government: “No more national parks, no more Small Business Administration loans, no more export subsidies, no more N.I.H. No more Medicaid (one-third of its budget pays for long-term care for our parents and others with disabilities). No more child health or child nutrition programs. No more highway construction. No more homeland security. Oh, and no more Congress.” << <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/opinion/24krugman.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09...man.html</a>
Originally Posted By CuriouserConstance "I'd rather have the military budget focus more on providing our soldiers with the best possible armor and equipment to keep them safe." Fat chance of that happening. The republicans make sure nothing like this ever passes into law.
Originally Posted By mawnck The best possible armor and equipment to keep them safe is armor and equipment that they are wearing and using in training exercises in the USA.
