Paul is a serious candidate. His election is no less likely than Barack Obama's was at this point in the election cycle. He'll face better opposition than Obama did in the General Election but probably not in the primaries. If Paul wants to win he will come up with a plan that addresses the shortfall in revenues vs spending in a way that everybody shares the costs involved but the wealthy pay a higher percentage of the freight. You can't squeeze people who have little or nothing to give to make up a trillion dollar deficit. The political theatrics involved are real but the math is not. The easy cuts have already been made. At this point almost all the effective cuts will squeeze actual voters and have corresponding costs. We're spending more than $700B a year on just the military and security complexes. That number should be cut by half or more in any credible plan to address the deficit and our long-term debt. Empire is an expensive proposition once the ability to set up Banana Republics is lost and we lost that effect in the Iraq War by over-reaching. Latin America hates us. Most Middle Eastern countries hate us. The only reason Africa doesn't hate us at this point is that they're not in our hemisphere and they have little that we want so we haven't seriously strong-armed them yet. Do we need the French and Italians chanting Death to America before we realize that we're as much responsible for the chant as they are?
Where are you getting that figure at?? the - $700B a year just on complexes alone... I don't think thats right. The total National Defense Budget for FY 2015 with all the outlays is $631B, and that includes all military spending from complexes to new camo helmets. http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2015/FY15_Green_Book.pdf
One thing I really like about Paul is that he generally wants our military and financing out of other countries where it doesn't need to be. His basic philosophy is to only get involved militarily/financially when we need to. I think that type of thinking can help to reduce military costs, although we'll be paying for the Iraq debacle for some time.
That's the budgeted amount for operations the government is willing to admit to. It doesn't include cost over runs, supplementary spending or black ops budget items. It doesn't include State Department spending that is directly related to military and covert operations that support and enable our overall posture. It doesn't include the long-term costs of our posture in other areas of government that pick up the slack when personnel and policies rotate out of the military sector of government to other areas. The Cato Institute pegs our overall spending at $687B a year at this point however they also can't account for things that just aren't in the budget.
What he thinks won't matter unless he makes heavy cuts in defense and security spending a plank of his platform. The military-security-industrial complex is far too well established to be significantly cut by anything short of a crusade to do that. Listen to Eisenhower. He really was one of the best big picture guys in American history and he understood exactly what was happening. However even a sitting President who formerly ran the largest military infrastructure in American history wasn't a big enough figure to effectively blow the whistle. Think about it.
Department of Defense spending goes way beyond just war, weapons,.. complexes and "empire" building. Its very complicated and short sighted IMO to focus on just that and suggest a wide scale cut in half here. You like having airbags in your car to save your life in that car accident you got into on I-95?? - Where do you think that technology came from? Navy defense spending on compressed air technology in torpedoes in response to submarine warfare in WW2... You like that MRIs have the ability to catch a tumor in your body before it progresses, saving you years on your life? -Where do you think that technology came from? DOD funding of magnetic resonance technology in Cold War response to nuclear warfare potential Hell, You like having the ability for us to communicate today on the Internet? -Where do you think that technology came from? DARPA electronic radar and communication spending I could go on and on. Defense spending is extremely important in my opinion and if I was looking to cut I'd look elsewhere
If Rand is elected and can keep the defense essentials but eliminate the graft and the waste then he's on his way to a balanced budget. Like Obama who is not a hawk he'll find out that the military component of the job is crucial and he'll end being more hawkish then he was when his term started. The one positive about a flat income tax is I guess it would keep more of the fat cats domestic. If you try like Bernie is saying to make the 1% pay their fair share they just won't. If they can't find a way around it and not to pay. They'll just go. If you can do your banking in the Cayman Islands you can live there, too. As for me though. I believe in a progressive system with no tax loopholes for the wealthy. But it's probably unrealistic.
Defense spending is fine. The governments #1 job is to defend it's citizens. The Iraq war is a huge portion of the deficit left behind by Bush. Was that war necessary? Is it helpful to give money and weapons to "less radical" militant groups in the middle east? point being you can and should spend a lot on defense but there is a lot of fat to trim.
Just once, can you come up with something/anything a little more nuanced beyond these whiny partisan assumptions and generalizations of yours?
The mainstream of this country is a Pro-Life, Pro-Gun, Limited Government. At least neanderthals have brains. Salmon, swimming against the stream, operate on feeling as opposed to some semblance of intellect. Just sayin.
Get off Bush. This President has run up more debt than every president before him, including Bush. Obama also increased Military Spending, (though...somehow...got retrograde results, in Syria,Iraq,Iran,Russia,Ukraine, and god knows where else)... The military is not the bad guy here. Clearly an ostensible Conservative, and a Flaming Liberal both saw fit to dump more money into that bucket, so...there's a there, there... Aside from the civilian benefits Nagle mentions, it's a jobs program, a career training program, and the fact that we have a finger on every spot of the globe, a deterrent of some measure...as our response time should it be warranted, is almost nil. And with the Navy now increasing it's Pacific footprint due to China's bellicose attitude, it's even less. The demon in the budget, is in the regulatory armies, stifling business, and killing consumers, an harassing citizens. Let's start with one of the biggest drains on the economy, that we don't talk about here... Anyone grill burgers this summer? Buy a T-Bone or a NY Strip? How about Chicken? Yep..Ethanol Subsidies and mandates. http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/27/want-cheaper-food-end-the-ethanol-mandat Corn. Then there is Sugar. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...82490a-53af-11e3-9fe0-fd2ca728e67c_story.html How about we stop fucking around and demonizing oil....embrace all fuels and let the markets reduce to their unpropped levels. https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...87b416-56d7-11e3-bdbf-097ab2a3dc2b_story.html You know...Free trade. This shit in the toilet we call politics runs in so many circles, that finding money, is like shooting fish in a barrel, if you can peel away the lobbyists, and the regulatory do-gooders. The regulators, fuck with your privacy more than the fucking Patriot act. Wake up. The Pen is mightier than the Sword. So, take an Electoral gun to those that wield the power of the Pen.
Huge tax cuts, Medicare Plan B and the Iraq War. That was a "compassionate conservative" at work. The really scary thing is that for the $13 trillion in new debt we have racked up since 2001 we could have balanced the budget, setup national healthcare and still spent as much on security as all the other nations on earth combined. There's a certain point where you have to ask yourself what's really going on in American politics. It's clearly not effective policy at work. Subsidizing growing cotton in the Arizona desert is insane. If anybody proposed it today they'd be laughed out of the room. We've been doing that for 75 years now.
