Fiscal Cliff: Elephant in the Room – Roger Ingalls
With all this hyped-out talk about the Fiscal Cliff, raising taxes, cutting Social Security and Medicare, why isn’t anyone talking about the obvious?
Yes, we need to let the temporary tax cuts given to the rich during the George W. Bush administration expire as originally promised almost a decade ago. And we need to cut some spending in the right areas.
Defense spending is the elephant in the room. All the politicians are ignoring the obvious. The military budget has tripled since 2002 and is the significant contributor to the debt. Social Security and Medicare are not the evil entitlements as promoted by the Conservatives.
I do not believe defense spending will be reduced to appropriate levels. In time, many politicians get appointed to the boards of defense contractors and they also receive campaign contributions from organizations associated with them. It’s not in the best interests of our elected officials to reduce defense spending.
We all know the world is not going to end if Washington does not come to a Fiscal Cliff agreement by the end of the year. It’s just political rhetoric meant to draw our attention away from the real problems.
Great point, Roger. No one is talking about defense. It’s so frustrating.
Alon
http://www.alonshalev.com/
Alon-It’s a tough issue for politicians…”can’t make the USA weak by cutting the military…blah, blah, blah.” thanks for the comments – Roger.
Roger, what you obviously don’t understand is that we need “readiness.” We need to be ready to fight two wars – against the Romulans and the Klingons. Both of these intergalactic opponents have lots of cool, high-tech weaponry that we will only be able to fight with outrageously expensive, “advanced” fighter jets and drones and so forth. And since they have these neat toys, they MIGHT use them against us, right? So it doesn’t matter if we could defeat 9 Russias or 92 Irans at the same time. The Klingons are coming!
Hi Tom-
And we’re even getting ready for bigger enemy! Check this out…. (probably have to copy and paste)
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/build-death-star-petition-clears-threshold-obama-response-185314096–politics.html
Thanks for the comment!
-Roger.