Looking at the Wiki article on the 2010 budget, I noticed that total tax receipts for 2010 were $2.381 trillion. Total mandatory spending was $2.184 trillion. That’s very close to 100% of tax intake. Before the USA spent a nickel on military affairs, a further $664 billion, the USA had to borrow about $1.3 trillion dollars.
The problem isn’t in goofy discretionary spending programs, although they deserve to be cut. The problem is in the swelling amount being spent on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid… and interest on the national debt. I’m not talking about repealing so-called “Obamacare.” We’re looking at the unsustainability of our three biggest social safety net programs.
Something has to give. The question is what?
The book I’m trying to read for the third time just got through mentioning how terribly inefficient the government is at spending money, especially for military R&D. I can’t remember the amount, but a disgusting proportion of it is spent on fraudulent projects.
Would there really be any disadvantage to creating a seperate branch of the militar specifically for unmanned vehicles, robots, and R&D in order to more intelligently appropriate money, prioritize projects, and avoid redundancies like when more than one branch of the military is spending to develop identical weapons? I think a collective research system would severely reduce the number of over-budget, past-due projects such as the F-22 and the F-35.
btw, the military discontinued the way more awesomer X-35 (I think that’s what it would be called) because it was over budget as well, but they hadn’t wasted nearly as much money on it as the F-35, so that program hung on there. The book was written about 3 years ago. The F-35 is STILL in the works. In the wise words of Megadeth (and others):
“Millitary Intelligence,
Two words combined that can’t make sense…”