Budget Priorities

I heard there is a suggestion we should take greater revenues the federal gov't is receiving and put it into more spending on the military. I can't imagine why we should do that. Our involvement in Afghanistan is winding down this year and we probably won't be leaving any contingent there. We won't be invading or "bomb bomb bombing" Iran. We won't be invading Syria. We won't be placing a security force in Ukraine capable of protecting it from the large Russian army. We won't be invading Russia to overthrow Putin. We won't be doing anything requiring a much larger military.

We won't be satisfying the mania of Senator John McCain and his friends who want to use every last dollar of America to build a military which one of their other friends, perhaps a future President Bush, can use to empty on some helpless country a la Johnny Rambo. It's the worst use of a government to take from its people merely to destroy another country.

What the Republicans have been arguing for years, and in fact what George W. Bush argued in 2000, is that we should shrink our military involvement around the world and use that money to build America. This would ease the tax burden some on the Americans Republicans claim to be protecting from "big government". Using money senselessly on the military is the worst kind of "big government".

Instead we should use any extra revenues in one of two ways: cut taxes on the public or to solve problems. The two major problems are to pay down the ridiculous debt the Republicans have saddled us with and to build American infrastructure (including R&D like science research). As we have a large debt I suggest the latter. Split whatever revenues are available between debt reduction and infrastructure building & repair. If someone would like to argue we need to reduce taxes on the poor over-burdened American taxpayer then all they have to do is commit to tax reform which includes reducing freebies to the rich and use that money instead of taxing the working class.

Too many of the working class aren't working any more!

They don't think we're spending enough on the military, but look at the following pie charts and decide for yourself.