Reagan budget director warns:America has ‘reached the point of no return,’

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  • mrjarrell

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    machete

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    David Stockman is sounding the alarm bells on the economy and the governments spending. He's even calling for demobilisation of the military, ala 1946, in an effort to curb the coming economic catastrophe. I have to say that I can see his point, rather clearly. It's past the time for austerity measures and if we don't do something now, when will we?

    Exclusive: America has ‘reached the point of no return,’ Reagan budget director warns | Raw Story

    apparently,,,you didnt get the memo that says americas most important job under the constitution is to protect our ally in the middle east and to keep americans from making themselves feel better...

    with these constitutional obligations,,,america is constitutionally bound to go bankrupt,,,

    america is not really serious about cutting spending... bet i still see the military sponsoring cars in nascar and nhra this year...
     

    Leadeye

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    While I can appplaud Mr. Stockman's motivation he misses a big part of the budget cutting picture. What has been done in this country is to make most of the economy tax dependent. When we start cutting things like the military, medicare, etc. what will go first are the jobs that go with these programs which will add to the already high unemployment. The non government dependent private sector has shrunken way beyond it's ability to absorb these newly unemployed.

    I wish I could see a solution that did not involve the standard of living in this country being reduce to that of mexico for a while but I don't.:dunno:
     

    ATOMonkey

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    Military spending is a drop in the bucket anymore. We have a category in the budget labeled as "other" that is almost as big as the Defense budget.

    The projected gross domestic product is listed at $15.3 trillion and the projected population for 2011 is shown as 311.6 million.[5]
    The federal budget for 2011 is projected at $3.83 trillion in total spending.[5] This is to include: $787.6 billion in pensions, $898 billion in health care expenditures, $140.9 billion for education, $928.5 billion in defense spending, $464.6 billion in welfare spending, $57.3 billion in protective services such as police, fire, law courts, $104.2 billion for transportation, $29 billion in general government expenses, $151.4 billion in other spending including basic research, and $250.7 billion on interest payments.[5]

    Buy food. Buy lots of it, as much as you can afford. It's looking more and more like we'll need it as things progress.
     

    mrjarrell

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    Military spending is a drop in the bucket anymore. We have a category in the budget labeled as "other" that is almost as big as the Defense budget.



    Buy food. Buy lots of it, as much as you can afford. It's looking more and more like we'll need it as things progress.
    Every drop counts when the bucket is overflowing. The military/"national security" eats up more than a good chunk of our tax dollars and, no matter how it might hurt some folks everything has to go on the chopping block. Just military budgeted spending in 2009 was 4.6% of GDP. That's not an insignificant number. Stockman is correct that we need to start downsizing somewhat. All across the board.
     

    ATOMonkey

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    Agreed, but a 100% reduction in defense won't put us in the black.

    We need a lot more serious talk about cutting social spending, and alphabet agencies, and less talk about constitutionally mandated spending that only accounts for about 16% of the budget.

    Not exactly low hanging fruit there. Especially with one war and several clandestine wars currently in operation. The threat of several world powers building might and the threat of nuclear war.

    There are definitely better ways to spend the almost $700B in the DOD budget, but I'd like to take a look at the other $3.1T we're just redistrubuting.
     

    dross

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    If we cut the entire military budget tomorrow, it would only cut the deficit in half.

    Pretend our budget is our household budget. Numbers are not exact, but very close.

    Our salary is 23,000 per year.
    We spend 35,000 per year.
    We owe a total of 140,000 for overspending in years past.
    Each year we add 12,000 to what we owe.

    We spend about 8750 to operate our household, to fund the different functions, excepting defense.

    We spend 6559 on defense.

    We spend 19,859 that we give to other people in our house in the form of social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, and unemployment benefits.

    We spend 1620 per year on interest for the debt of years past.

    We can't fix this problem by cutting defense.
     

    mrjarrell

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    While $700 billion is what is budgeted, just remember that the military has been receiving many billions more outside of the budget in discretionary spending for the wars. That adds ups really fast and it's all been borrowed money. Ending these already lost conflicts, bringing the troops home and demobilising all but the necessary defensive troops would serve to save us a load of money. Entitlements are certainly overdue for cuts, as well. But the military is eating up a lot of money.
     

    dross

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    We can't fix the problem if we leave it alone, either. Nothing is sacred on the road to disaster.


    Okay, what percent should we cut it by? I'll add that to my household budget analogy, and let's see how we do.

    Should we cut defense by ten percent? Twenty percent? Half?

    Let's talk turkey.
     

    mrjarrell

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    Okay, what percent should we cut it by? I'll add that to my household budget analogy, and let's see how we do.

    Should we cut defense by ten percent? Twenty percent? Half?

    Let's talk turkey.
    I don't know what a good percentage would be, off the top of my head. Bring everyone home and demobilise and see what we need after that. We could certainly quit building ships for awhile. The USN has had useless ships foisted on them for years now. Ships they didn't need or even want. They could quit paying for the research into new planes and such and have the private companies do their own research and then present them with finished products, rather than engage in costly boondoggles that go on for a decade or better. Start closing overseas bases that are no longer relevant to our defence. The cold war ended a long time ago. We need to act like it's over.
    Would a 25% cut hurt? Unlikely, if we would quit playing world police. More would likely be acceptable. The military and national defence crowd, along with their supporters need to stop acting as if there's some sacred cow that must be left alone. The entitlement crowd acts the same way, with their pet projects. The military isn't a jobs program and was never meant to be one. Let's cut things and make it a truly defensive force and stop acting like the American empire. Those days are over. We can no longer afford it.
     

    ATOMonkey

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    In 2010, 61.37% of all Federal Dollars Budgeted was social spending, aka redistrubtion.

    Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Unemployment, Health and Human Service.

    You want to get serious about the debt, start with our "mandatory" spending. Until we address that giant elephant in the room it doesn't matter what you do with the rest of it.

    We're spending $787B in PENSIONS in 2011. What does that say to you?
     

    dross

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    If we cut the entire military budget tomorrow, it would only cut the deficit in half.

    Pretend our budget is our household budget. Numbers are not exact, but very close.

    Our salary is 23,000 per year.
    We spend 35,000 per year.
    We owe a total of 140,000 for overspending in years past.
    Each year we add 12,000 to what we owe.

    We spend about 8750 to operate our household, to fund the different functions, excepting defense.

    We spend 6559 on defense.

    We spend 19,859 that we give to other people in our house in the form of social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, and unemployment benefits.

    We spend 1620 per year on interest for the debt of years past.

    We can't fix this problem by cutting defense.

    I don't know what a good percentage would be, off the top of my head. Bring everyone home and demobilise and see what we need after that. We could certainly quit building ships for awhile. The USN has had useless ships foisted on them for years now. Ships they didn't need or even want. They could quit paying for the research into new planes and such and have the private companies do their own research and then present them with finished products, rather than engage in costly boondoggles that go on for a decade or better. Start closing overseas bases that are no longer relevant to our defence. The cold war ended a long time ago. We need to act like it's over.
    Would a 25% cut hurt? Unlikely, if we would quit playing world police. More would likely be acceptable. The military and national defence crowd, along with their supporters need to stop acting as if there's some sacred cow that must be left alone. The entitlement crowd acts the same way, with their pet projects. The military isn't a jobs program and was never meant to be one. Let's cut things and make it a truly defensive force and stop acting like the American empire. Those days are over. We can no longer afford it.

    I think a 25% cut is much too much, but okay, let's do it.

    Now our budget looks like this:

    Our salary is 23,000 per year.
    We spend 33,361 per year.
    We owe a total of 140,000 for overspending in years past.
    Each year we add 10,361 to what we owe.

    We spend about 8750 to operate our household, to fund the different functions, excepting defense.

    We spend 4920 on defense.

    We spend 19,859 that we give to other people in our house in the form of social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, and unemployment benefits.

    We spend 1620 per year on interest for the debt of years past.

    Okay, done. What's next?
     

    ATOMonkey

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    I don't know what a good percentage would be, off the top of my head. Bring everyone home and demobilise and see what we need after that. We could certainly quit building ships for awhile. The USN has had useless ships foisted on them for years now. Ships they didn't need or even want. They could quit paying for the research into new planes and such and have the private companies do their own research and then present them with finished products, rather than engage in costly boondoggles that go on for a decade or better. Start closing overseas bases that are no longer relevant to our defence. The cold war ended a long time ago. We need to act like it's over.
    Would a 25% cut hurt? Unlikely, if we would quit playing world police. More would likely be acceptable. The military and national defence crowd, along with their supporters need to stop acting as if there's some sacred cow that must be left alone. The entitlement crowd acts the same way, with their pet projects. The military isn't a jobs program and was never meant to be one. Let's cut things and make it a truly defensive force and stop acting like the American empire. Those days are over. We can no longer afford it.

    Long lead time items like boats, planes, and tanks won't (in reality can't) be cut. Say you do take $230B out of the DOD budget.

    You only have about $1.5T to go.
     

    ATOMonkey

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    It says we can't afford to have any sacred cows and that all programs, large and small, need to be put on the block.

    It says to me that our priorities are way out of whack, and that the government isn't serious about balancing the budget.

    Until we start talking about cutting pension, medicare, mediaid, welfare, unemployment, and social security, there's no sense in talking about cutting defense.
     

    ATOMonkey

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    Well Dross, seems like the biggest number is that $19k that we just give away. Seems we could cut charity in half and balance the whole thing.
     
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