do we really need 50% of our budget spent on defense?

[LSK]

Considering that our only enemies up until recently were a few guys hiding in caves halfway around the world?

[lvx35]

1. well sure we do, its just a matter of math.

And the threats posed. Why look at 9/11 2001, where 3000 people died. What's more threatening than that? Liberal causes like safer cars? Ha! how many people died of car crashes in 2001? Just 48,000 like every other year? It makes PERFECT sense that our spending on safer driving be 1/100,000 our defense spending...Just do the numbers! ;) :sarcasm:

[punpirate]

2. Actually, it's more than 50%...

... if you can believe that. For fiscal year 2004, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) (yeah, who's ever heard of that agency?) did a line-by-line audit of the entire discretionary budget. Each line item was analyzed as defense spending, or non-defense spending. Minus the amount spent on interest on the debt, the entire discretionary budget was $810 billion. Defense spending occupied $568 billion, or 68%. The interest on the debt that year was $315 billion, and more than two-thirds of those interest payments were related to defense spending in the past. That means that, altogether, we spent about $780 billion on defense that fiscal year.

The answer to your question is: no, we don't have to spend this kind of money. But we do. Finding the reasons for why we do might help up avoid doing so in the future. That won't happen until we have an administration willing to step up to the plate and ask some hard questions (and, hint, one that doesn't govern by terrorizing the public with lies about their security).

Cheers.

[LSK]

3. the reason we do is becuase of Duke Cunninghams, Carlyse Group, GE

Corporate welfare. Defense spending is the biggest racket of all time. See F9/11.

[punpirate]

8. Umm, I have seen Farenheit 9/11...

... but there are other reasons besides just bribery. Is it a racket? A good deal of it, yes. But, this trend started long before there was a Carlyle Group or Duke Cunningham was in Congress. Long before that.

And nobody's questioning it, because they're scared. They've been made scared for about six decades.

Cheers.

[spanone]

4. NO

[PA Democrat]

5. Someone out there correct me if I am wrong, but i believe that it is

over 50% of discretionary spending. Non-discretionary spending would include things such as Social Security and interest on the national debt.

[Bluerthanblue]

6. defending people who die for lack of health care, shelter,

and a means of heating their homes, not to mention food-

The best 'security' is a nation where its people are looked after as if 'we' including the lowest of the low- really matter-

With that kind of treatment, no one would be a true 'threat'- because we WOULD be 'united'- and would have so much left over, that we'd be feeding rather than raping the world-

[dysfunctional press]

10. the military isn't there to protect the people-

it's there to keep money and power in the hands of the people who have it, and to make the world safe for american business.

[Bluerthanblue]

12. hate to agree, but i do- sad truth eh? n/t

[dysfunctional press]

16. if it was just about protecting we the people-

why would we need such a huge military...? where and who would we need fear invasion from? especially in the kinds of numbers it would ultimately take to suppress what would obviously become our own insurgency/underground.

nukes would be about the only thing that's going to conquer us militarily- until a deadlier technology comes along...and how can troops protect us from incoming icbm's..?

[killbotfactory]

7. No.

[mmonk]

9. Pretty soon,

we'll look like North Korea.

[dysfunctional press]

11. Our "defense" budget is one of the hugest obscenities on the planet.

when you think about what we could have accomplished with all that squanderd wealth...it makes you(well, me anyway) sick to your soul.

at least it should.

[PA Democrat]

13. Did you ever see True Majority's "oreo cookie" illustration of defense

spending? The numbers they use are not this year's budget in which defense spending has been increased even more , while spending on education and other social programs has been cut.

http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/

[izzybeans]

14. Most of It is for Offense not defense. Our Depertment of Offense

is also a Department of Collective Paranoia. The budget priorities are pretty damn offensive if you ask me.

[0rganism]

17. time to rename it to the Department of War and Occupation

It's not entirely fair to call DoD offense only, since in theory if the USA were invaded we'd expect its personnel and equipment to operate in our defense, but in practice that hasn't happened for over 60 years.

[izzybeans]

18. Well right I was just being silly.

We would expect defense. But installing bases all around the globe places the focus elsewhere not make it defense. The euphemism is U.S. interests, but that's a cloak for something horribly offensive in my book.

If we were worried about an invasion we wouldn't be worried about our "strike" capabilities so much.

[Kansas Wyatt]

15. The military industrial complex feels that we have to...

Spend more on defense than the entire rest of the world combined spends on defense. In fact, the military industrial complex also feels that they can make us even safer if we spent even more on defense, which would require cuts in other federal programs to funnel more money to the military industrial complex.

The military industrial complex would also like to remind you, contrary to what all other industrialized nations have done, nationalized health care will never protect your well being like the military industrial complex can. Contrary to the military industrial complex's delusional belief, other industrialized nations prefer to make sure their citizens have health care to protect their citizens from real threats, rather than delusional self made threats from the military industrial complex.

This country has been perverted into a corrupt racket, and it's citizens have become the servants of our Corporate Government. The military industrial complex has been granted a big chunk of controlling shares in our Corporate Government.

[Odin2005]

19. We spend WAY to much on millitary, even before *.

We need to cut millitary spending big time and concentrate more on Special Ops and making our grunts better at peacekeeping and occupation duty like many of the European millitaries are, not waste gigabucks on fancy stuff that will just enrich defence contractors without doing anything useful.

[stop the bleeding]

20. WE - don't need it - Halliburton NEEDS OUR MONEY n/t