Quote:
Originally Posted by randolph
Actually, I should have pointed out that the plus fifty percent applied to discretionary spending not the total budget.
The point is that the military spending is discretionary so if we seriously want to get out of this budget hole, we need to cut military spending. Our Congress is not willing to do that. Are they hostages to the military industrial complex? Eisenhower would be shocked and appalled.
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I'm not sure where your source came from (it doesn't even have a year on it, or even a country for that matter lol), and to tell the truth, I'm not sure where my pie chart came from. So I went to the horses mouth here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/winning-th...ractive-budget
Since it's not in a convenient pie chart I made my own (you can check the numbers if you like, I didn't fudge anything. Just mouse over the categories and see the numbers there). And then I made another one lumping all the welfare programs into one category.
You say, or your source says, that defense is discretionary. I would argue that maybe some of it is discretionary, but for a large country, full of resources like the US, it's mandatory.
Defense is 19.27% and welfare programs are a whopping 60.84% of the budget. Some can certainly be cut from defense... when we're not at war, but 60% for welfare programs for a country with as many opportunities as US has is quite excessive. I am certainly not saying welfare should be cut entirely, but a number that high is screaming for scrutiny to see where cuts can be made.