Don’t Touch Military Spending!!!

   - Balancing the budget without Cutting Defense?

When tea party congressman, conservatives, libertarians and other advocates of fiscal responsibility propose meaningful measures to eliminate the deficit, certain advocates for the perpetuation U.S. military establishments in foreign nations proclaim all military spending is “off the table.” They argue that the military spending not only cannot be cut, but that the rate of increase in military expenditures cannot even be slowed. Can a balanced budget be achieved without touching defense spending? Let’s just look at the 2010 budget expense numbers and see what we can find.

The 2010 budget was $3,552 billion with $2,200 in revenue, leaving a $1.3 Trillion deficit added to the ever growing national debt.

In 2010 the Department of Defense budget was $533 billion, plus the “overseas contingency operations” expenditures brings the total Department of Defense budget to $663 billion. Defense related expenditures outside the Department of Defense, depending the source and method of calculation, ranged between $319 billion and $654 billion. This brings the total low end defense related spending to $1 trillion.

Now if we merely kept the core expenses of defense spending, interest payments on the debt, social security and Medicare/Medicaid what is our budget? Interest on the national debt for 2010 was $164 billion (and rising). Social Security spending was $695 billion (and rising) plus $9 billion in administration costs. Medicare/caid expenses for $2010 was $543 billion. Tally these together with defense related spending and the total expenses come to between $2.4 to $2.7 trillion for 2010, which is still running a deficit of at least over $200 billion for the year.

Mind you this is after already eliminating every other government expense. PBS, FBI, DEA, FDA, NASA, FEC, SEC, WIC, Food Stamps, Border Patrol and Customs, HUD, Customs, the Department of Energy of energy, Department of Education, Department of Interior, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture, EPA, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Department of Health and Human Services, and everything else separate from defense spending – all completely eliminated and the government is still running deficits.

Thus anyone who claims that defense spending is “off the table” when it comes to a balanced budget is living in fantasyland of self-delusion. Fiscal responsibility will not be achieved at this point without involving defense in the budget cutting process. It is no secret that U.S. debt is spiraling out of control.  Those who still insist on maintaining physical bases in Japan, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, and every other locale throughout the world are sentencing the U.S. to inevitable fiscal collapse as much as any other fiscally irresponsible politician who refuses to take action on the U.S. debt. Like a spoiled child in a tantrum they scream “I want” “I want” “I want,” while blissfully and willfully ignorant to the realities of our circumstances. Take your choice – save our nation or save your pet defense project (for a little while longer). That is the bottom line. It is time to wake up to the real world and save your country.

Es tu Spartacus?