November 13, 2012

• Wile E. America

  You may have heard about the whole fiscal cliff that we are going to drop off of if a deal is not reached between the Republicans and Democrats regarding spending and the budget at the end of the year. I’m with everybody else when it comes to spending and the national debt. Look, there is no doubt about it, we need to get our shit in order, plain and simple. But what isn’t plain and simple is HOW. If you ask the Republicans, raising taxes on anybody is NEVER an option but instead we should be cutting spending on entitlement programs such as welfare, among other things. Democrats say we should raise taxes on the rich and cut spending, in particular military spending, which Republicans are wholeheartedly against. So what is the best way to handle the situation?

  Well first of all, when you talk about spending, you can’t even begin to have a serious conversation unless heavy cuts to military spending is strongly considered. The fact is, and overwhelming portion on our budget goes towards three things, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and the military. Since cutting Social Security and Medicare is pretty much political suicide, it is usually never even discussed, not that it shouldn’t be, hell at the very least the system needs serious reforming if it is going to remain in place for future generations. But the military on the other hand, well that is a different story. Although I’m talking straight out of my ass on this one, regardless of what anybody says, we can probably stand to cut the cost of the military in half or even more and still remain the strongest and most powerful country in the world. Do you realize we used to spend over a hundred million dollars a year to make a jet that the military has never used and has no intention on ever using? The military budget is filled with wasteful spending like this all over it’s budget. Yet, when it came up for a vote to stop making the jet, there were still people in Congress that voted to keep making it, mainly because people would lose jobs if we stopped making it. Also, we pay military contractors upwards of $103 to wash one load of laundry and $48 for a case of Coke. If this isn’t wasteful and pointless spending than nothing is.

  When it comes to cuts to the military, Republicans and even some Democrats refuse to see it as an option. Instead they would rather cut spending to PBS or on helping poor people keep their heat on during the winter. The way I see it, that type of spending is not even in the same universe with the spending that is done on the military. Anybody who refuses to discuss cuts to military but yet are hung up on insisting that there be cuts to unemployment doesn’t deserve to be part of any sort of spending conversation. Sure, nobody wants to support capable people who take unnecessary advantage of government programs and are financially dependent on the government. Yes, that is an issue for a percentage of the people on Welfare and other government programs. But, guess what? Not only is it not the problem but it is not even something that should even be discussed if we don’t handle the behemoth that is military spending. You can’t solve a spending and debt crisis without tackling the things we spend the most on. Cutting something like PBS while not touching the military is kind of like cutting a blade of grass in an acre of lawn and saying it solved the problem of overgrown grass.

  I can say with utmost confidence that there is not a single member of Congress who can honestly say that every last dollar of military spending is absolutely vitally necessary to national security. And since nobody can make that argument, it is high time we look at the cost of the bloated military budget.

  • 10:48 pm
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