The Right Fangirl

And more jets designed to fight the USSR.

From:

gotsparkly.livejournal.com

Hmm, really? Consider this:

Which is the bigger target?

From:

Lumping them together like that is kinda disingenuous, instead of comparing each segment to defense spending. Also, comparing entitlements to discretionary is also a bit disingenuous. Something like this (http://i.imgur.com/BAiF3.jpg) paints a more accurate picture of discretionary spending.

Even with Obama's extra spending, defense is still a bigger slice of the pie. There's far more fat to be cut from military spending, and cutting defense doesn't directly affect the poor. Also, good luck running on a platform of killing Medicare or Social Security.

I think cuts should be from the top down - cut what least affects those who are worst off. Once we've got that more under control, THEN we should start cutting things like entitlements.

From:

Given the magnitude of the overall deficit, I would start cutting where the bulk of the money is spent. 60% of overall federal spending is on wealth transfer activities, so I'd start looking there first.

I would *also* simply withdraw from afghanistan, the civil war and genocide that will result is inevitable, delaying it a few years isn't worth the price were paying in blood and treasure. I would inform our treaty allies that America will no longer be the worlds policemen, that Japan is hereby authorized to form their own military, and would be well advised to do so because we're withdrawing from Okinawa in a few years. And I would start making some rather brutal cuts to virtually every aspect of defense.

But the point is......

http://www.federalbudget.com/
http://www.usdebtclock.org/

commune with those 2 sites for a while. Cutting the defense budget *to zero* only gets us *half* way to balanced. You think we can do that? Cause I don't. That means we're going to *have* to cut some of those thrice damned "entitlements" that no one was *ever* really entitled to, because we are rapidly running out of people willing to loan us money.

From:

As I said, go ahead and build a political platform on ending Medicare and Social Security.

From:

It'll happen whether anyone forms a political platform based on it or not. You're right that the public isn't smart enough to recognize that, but that's mostly the fault of dishonesty on the part of media and "educators", so it really doesn't buy *you* much in this discussion.

From:

How is it disingenuous to compare all of "entitlement spending" to all of "defense spending?" Are you saying that we should compare only Social Security spending (one portion of entitlement spending) to only say, the spending of the US Navy (one portion of defense spending)? The spending for any one of the "big 3" entitlement programs will still dwarf the spending for any one of the "big 3" branches of the military (Army/Navy(I include Marines)/Air Force).

Also, cutting defense does directly impact "the poor." Do you think everyone in the military is an officer living off-base in a gated neighborhood? Not hardly. There are plenty of "poor" people in the military, and there are plenty of "poor" people who's livelihood depends on the bases they serve. You don't think closing bases and cutting military jobs won't affect the civilian businesses who rely on those installations? You don't think it won't create more unemployed/poor people? In Jacksonville where I spent most of my time as a Navy brat there were 3 bases in the immediate area: one is closed (BRAC) and the other two are shrinking--one is coming up for review in the next round of BRAC closures. The military is the number one employer for the city and Jacksonville has around one million people living there.

Then think further to all of the relief and humanitarian missions the US military participates in. Since we're typically the #1 provider of aid to the rest of the world, first ones to show up at a disaster, etc...how do you think all those poor people would fare when we can no longer afford to feed and shelter them? Not that they're our problem in the first place, but we give because we can.

Don't forget this:

Under sequestration, the major entitlements would be cut by only 15 percent whereas non-defense discretionary programs (like welfare) take a hit of 28 percent. The military's budget drops the steepest amount of 43 percent under sequestration. These planned cuts speak clearly to the federal government's priorities. The military, despite all rhetoric to the contrary, is often low on the list of political concerns.

link (http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-cuts-be-made-to-domestic-social-programs-to-protect-the-defense-budget/entitlement-programs-not-defense-the-source-of-deficit-crisis)

Did you know that Obama helped pass a law a few years back making it mandatory for employers to give 60 days notice on foreseeable layoffs? But now Obama wants the DoD to hold back on releasing those pink slips since the timeline has them coming out only a few days before the presidential election. So, people are going to lose their jobs so that the federal government can shirk its Constitutional duty in favor of funding (and growing!) un-Constitutional entitlement programs and Obama won't even give them the grace of some honesty.

So yes, there is fat to be trimmed everywhere, but it is incredibly dangerous for us to cut our defense spending especially this radically. It also isn't right to cut the defense spending when defense spending isn't even the biggest problem. Also the longer you wait to cut entitlements, the more people are on them and the more impacting it will be, especially considering that the government is actively trying to increase the number of people using entitlement programs.

Some honesty on this issue would be greatly appreciated from both sides.

From:

How is it disingenuous to compare all of "entitlement spending" to all of "defense spending?"

Because each segment of entitlement spending is paid for with its own deductions, which increase or decrease along with the programs. That's the very definition of entitlement spending. We can choose to waste money on military spending, which is a massive chunk of the discretionary budget. Given that Iraq is now over and we both want Afghanistan to end, keeping the military at current levels would be silly at best. That, or we could let them waste another five billion on another camo redesign, or jets that don't work.

...Also, cutting defense does directly impact "the poor."

Did you see the part where I want to increase military pay? Even as a single soldier I had a rough time keeping afloat with what I got. Even besides that point, the trend has been to raise military pay only to the level of the civilian equivalent, when there's a hell of a lot of extra bullshit associated with the military job, not to mention that paying the military more is a moral thing to do to ask them to do our rough work.

...how do you think all those poor people would fare when we can no longer afford to feed and shelter them?

Why do you think this kind of spending is appropriate, but spending on Americans in need is bad?

...but it is incredibly dangerous for us to cut our defense spending especially this radically.

Pfffff. Modern defense, which is basically anti-terrorism, is a job for the CIA, FBI, and NSA. If you want better "defense", increase their budget and R&D. Having a two-war standing army in this day and age is ludicrous, and having them around and handy makes any old war the current leadership wants to fight easy for them, hard for the servicemembers.

From:

Drawing down the military while we have a soon-to-be nuclear Iran, a resurgent Russia, and an ascendant China is a bad idea. I think I understood that you served. Did your instructors tell you it was better to defeat your enemies overwhelmingly or just barely? The reason Iran/Russia/China are acting the way they are is they see weakness in both our military readiness and military leadership. The cuts will only serve to make that weakness fact. And please stop trotting out things that are obviously wasteful (such as the uniforms) because that is something we 100% agree upon and absolutely not what is being discussed.

And I'm not sure how cutting the defense budget is going to raise the pay for people in the military. Cuts will force the mlitary to choose between more take-home pay for that E1 or better armor/weaponry/training/R&D. Maybe the housing allowance gets removed so that they're making even less now than before, maybe TriCare gets reduced even more than it already is, or maybe their job gets eliminated altogether. That's what budget cuts mean. You say it is the "moral" thing to do to pay the miltary more. Is it the moral thing to do to cut the pay/jobs of military people in favor of people who use and abuse the welfare system? Last I checked, Americans in the military aren't risking their lives so Joe Schmoe can sit in his Section 8 apartment and watch "free" government subsidized cable TV (yep there are low-income cable TV programs for people who just can't afford that neccessary item) while eating "free" lobster and and chatting on his "free" cell phone.

I didn't say that relief aid overseas was appropriate; I said its something that we currently do that we would no longer be able to do if/when the budget is cut. You said the "poor" wouldnt be affected by DoD budget cuts but did not specify that you only (apparently) meant "America's poor."

The reason why "modern defense" is more anti-terrorism focused is because our military is more than capable of defeating the military of anyone else on the planet. If that changes, it would be naive to think that other nations wouldn't take advantage of our inability to protect our resources and our allies. American dominance is a deterrent to other militaries doing things that we don't like. "Peace through superior firepower" is the logic, I believe. To take the terrorism angle to its logical extension: suppose those terrorists took control of an entire government and thus its military? Oh wait, that's already happening in Egypt. and potentially Libya as well. According to you, the FBI/CIA/NSA, which are law-enforcement and intelligence entities, can handle that, and FYI the NSA falls under the DoD so its budget would get cut as well. I wonder what the CIA would do with any intel they might get without a military that is capable of exploiting it...

So honestly, I'm not sure whose side you are on here. One one hand, you claim to be for the military, at least as individual sevicemen. On the other, you want all of the "poor" Americans to be taken care of by the government at the expense of the people in the miiltary and overall national defense. Since we're running out of money due to bloated entitlement programs that shouldn't exist in the first place, you can't have it both ways anymore.

From:

I think he's talking about, for example, eliminating a few carrier groups, and closing some foreign bases, and then sharing that money among the remaining soldiers. For example, if you cut the budget by 25%, but do not renew the hitches of half the soldiers, then you can give each remaining soldier a 50% pay raise.

From:

OK. We have 11 carriers, though, so I'm not sure how many groups we could eliminate and still be at 100% readiness anytime, anywhere. Also, one carrier is thousands of jobs for the ship itself. The support group would be thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) more jobs. Considering our current job market, those people would go straight to the unemployment line and wind up on government benefits, thus exacerbating the original problem and solving absolutely nothing (and in this environment, the 50% pay raise would likely make the servicemen "too rich" and the raise would be confiscated via taxation).

Closing the foreign bases would be a much better idea, IMHO, because it does irritate me that we're enabling Europe etc to have all those entitlements because we're paying for their defense (consider: the UK has 1 aircraft carrier, the French have 1, Spain has 2, Germany has 0 etc--what kind of power do their navies really have to protect themselves and their interests abroad?). The only caveat is that Europe isn't financially capable of defending itself anymore so "abandoning" them basically invites invasion from say, Russia or China or attack from Iran. Also we would be leaving it up to them to defend our trade/security interests within their borders, which goes back to the first point. Finally, we would inevitably be drawn into any Eur-Asian conflict, anyway, either via the U.N., NATO, treaties with allies, or the desire to protect our interests so its better to prevent conflicts through projection of superior power than it is to have to fight an actual war.

So I guess I've laid out many logical (and a Constitutional!) reasons why defense shouldn't be cut, or rather why it shouldn't be at the front of the line for cuts and should not be cut drastically (rather wasteful spending like the uniform debacle and those famous thousand-dollar toilet seats etc should be trimmed out), but its still not clear to me why--other than for emotional reasons--entitlement spending should not be cut/eliminated.

From:

Everything you've said is true (well, except for the bit about taxation, it doesn't work that way). The unemployed soldiers would be a temporary issue, but still an issue.

The leftist position on this is the claim that we don't *need* readiness everywhere, all the time, that doing the job of the "worlds policemen" is ill conceived, and that the world will not go to war if the US military goes home.

To a pretty fair extent, I agree with them. I suspect that we could, over time, cut 30 or 40% of the total military spending without seriously endangering the world order. There will be prices to be paid, yes, Japan will have to build their own defense forces, as will most of the nations of europe, etcetera.

You're right that a lot of countries are basically existing on US military welfare, that (for example) France can only spend as little on their military as they do exactly *because* we spend so much. Is there any reason to keep doing that?

But my point remains, it is mathematically impossible to balance the budget by military cuts. We spend $725B/year on military activities, and are running 1.3B/year (ish) deficits. So cutting the military to *zero* only gets us halfway there. Entitlements are 60% of the budget, military is 20%. That leaves 20 for all other activities, like debt service, highways, nasa, state department, etcetera. That means that there is literally no mathematical way that the budget can be balanced without cutting welfare and entitlement programming.

Now I personally would be inclined to start with the things that are not constitutional to begin with, and that are damaging in their results. The department of education should be cut in toto. The department of labor serves no useful purpose, The department of agriculture has accomplished very little that is in any way desirable, HUD is an abomination and a crime against nature, OSHA costs millions of US jobs every year it is in existence. But that's just me. Fact is, I really don't *care* what gets cut, so long as overall spending is actually honestly brought down.

From:

You are awesome for posting these.

And thanks Obama for wanting to kill our space program. No matter what he says, I think American exceptional-ism (that's probably the wrong word, I'm still not totally awake yet) really chafes him.

From:

He campaigned on increasing NASA funding and other space stuff and followed through on most of it.

From:

Wow. Wonder why the sudden change of heart then...

From:

What?

From:

What I said in my first comment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35131431/ns/technology_and_science-space

From:

Your first comment said he was killing the space program, that says he's increasing (or increased, the article is from 2010) the budget but with no moon programs. Returning to the moon would be really cool, but doesn't have very good bang for the buck on new science.

From:

but doesn't have very good bang for the buck on new science.

Really? How so?

I noticed your reply to a similar comment made above about "stopping the space program", you mentioned "more jets designed to fight the USSR." I can't tell if you're an Obama supporter defending him (I've noticed similar comments on other sites from liberals defending him), especially because this person mentioned stopping the space program for more handouts, or what. But if so, I don't have the energy to debate. It's just tit-for-tat now. And there are things about Obama that bother me more than anything concerning the space program. It just came to mind now with the images that were posted.

From:

Phil Plait (who's really cool, and way smarter than I) talked about the NASA budget changes (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/01/president-obamas-nasa-budget-unveiled/) at the time. Basically, going back to the moon would cost a lot with little scientific return, and the program already in progress for going back to the moon was a boondoggle.

I think military spending should be cut and pay increased. And while Obama has pulled people out of Iraq, he's escalated in Afghanistan and escalated drone strikes, the drones to a significant degree, which I think is the wrong move.

From:

kelincihutan.livejournal.com

Eh... I used to live near Huntsville, AL. I went to school there for a year. This being important because I personally know a bunch of guys who work for NASA and are pissed about Obama pulling the budget for future moon missions, because they feel it's worth it. Technologically and in things that we could learn about the moon. As well as for it's own sake. I don't think one man's voice is the final word in "how NASA feels about this budget." At best, there is division in the ranks. The grumbling I've heard, however, seems to be pretty widespread. I will acknowledge that this may be a case of Small Reference Pools (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SmallReferencePools), but there you are.

From:

I don't mean to say he's the last word on it, just a better picture of what's going on. There's certainly going to be division on the changes. Just when you take the cost of one manned mission, and compare it to how much you could do with unmanned probes and stuff, the unmanned wins out on return on investment given their limited budget.

I think moon missions are worth it too, including manned missions to Mars. NASA is a tiny sliver of the budget and does so much in and of themselves, not to mention all the trickle-down technology benefits into the rest of the world, there's just no political will to do more than itty bitty increases.

From:

Thanks for the link, I will check that out.

I do agree that Afghanistan has become a mess.

From:

Heh, it started out a mess and went downhill from there. Graveyard of empires and all that...

From:

Okay dude, what you're missing is that he may have increased the funding for "nasa", but he's also re-tasked it *from* atmospheric and space to Muslim outreach. Name a few actual *space* programs that have gotten funded under Obama? Didn't think so.

From:

http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html

From:

So, no then.

From:

Is that or is that not the long list of NASA missions currently underway that you asked for?

From:

As I replied above, it is a list of projects completed by others that he hasn't killed yet. Not an indication that he has directed *any* increases at any of NASAs actual core objectives.

From:

My fault, I meant to link the future one too, given that he's had three years in office so far. But given your "debate" style I've seen elsewhere, you'll pardon me if I deign to engage you anymore in this post.

From:

And you'll notice that I linked the future one. I linked it to show that it's a *very* small fraction of the preexisting ones. There are roughly 100 currently operating projects, 33 past projects, and *4* future projects. Now, if we look a little at some math, we will see that nasa, founded by ike in 1958, has been around for 14 presidential terms (depending on how you count), past and present projects (all of which were initiated py previous presidents) account for 133 projects, or roughly 10 per president. This president has 4. That's less than half.

Now, looking a little closer at those "future" projects,
the first one is the freaking *ISS* for fuck's sake! What is this even doing under "future"?
The second is the next satellite in a project that is 40 years old.
The third, MAVEN, was initiated under bush in '08
the fourth, RBSP was done under Bush.

So there is *literally* no project started under the Obama administration. None.

As for your *deigning* to engage with me, I am not impressed by you either, you are not honest. But I will continue to point out the most blatant of your dishonesties where I find them.

From:

I should give you more than that.

From the top.
ACE, launched aug, 1997
aim, Launch Date: April 25, 2007
aqua Launched on May 4, 2002
aquarius, Launch Date: June 10, 2011
ARCTAS is OLD
same with artemis.....
suzaku, launched July 10, 2005
aurora, Launched: July 15, 2004
CAlipso, Launch Date: April 28, 2006
cassini, launched in 1997
chandra, launched July 23, 1999

Tired of this, look at the "future projects" page. The fact is, the guy *gutted* all the actual *science* related activities of NASA, in favor of this
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims/

It is utterly laughable to claim that this pathetic freak has advanced *anything*.

From:

It's also kinda funny, in *2007 constant dollars*, the budget for NASA is *down* a little over a billion since he took office from 17.1 in '08 to 16 in '12. It also represents the smallest percentage of overall federal spending that it has since 2 years after it's founding. You can bet that if that were the case in any *other* program, no liberal would be trying to defend the statement that he "increased" the budget.

From:

Was that before or after he killed the shuttle program, the Constellation Project, and announced NASA's new "mission" was Muslim outreach?

From:

The shuttle program was getting very long in the tooth (40 years!), Constellation was a money-wasting boondoggle, and even with the Muslim outreach weirdness they're still doing super cool science.

From:

Again, you can't name even *one* project that they have started under this administration. Not *one*.

You're right that the shuttle program was old (and to *real* space buffs, kinda ill conceived to begin with), but to pull it, AND constellation without *anything* in the pipe at any point for a replacement was.... The word "sabotage" comes to mind.

From:

Whether the shuttle program was "old" or not is irrelevant. By cancelling the program before a replacement became ready Obama single-handedly set us back 50 years as the USA is no longer capable of putting men into Earth orbit.

That is not exactly something I would count as an "accomplishment."

From:

ladylynx.livejournal.com

I'll admit, I don't see the point in a space program right now. I could agree with him or anyone on killing it. We landed on Mars. So what? Our country is still getting screwed by the left.

From:

Well, when you put it that way...

Yep, like I told the other poster, there are other things that bug me more as far as the President and his minions go.

From:

lazypadawan.livejournal.com

There's a lot to be said about international prestige. It matters. Just as it once mattered that Spain or Britain could send explorers around the world and claim its treasures, it matters today that America can reach further and further into space. People understood that after the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957. I find it embarrassing that we now have to rely on Vladimir Putin to give our astronauts a ride to the International Space Station. Speaking of which, I'd rather we put the flag first on Mars, Jupiter, etc. and keep space free and open, instead of letting the ChiComs or the Russkies do it. Besides, innovations created in the process of space exploration benefit everyone.

From:

kelincihutan.livejournal.com

I am clearly five years old, but I read your post and immediately started thinking, "Could you put a flag on Jupiter? It's a gas giant, so maybe if you made the flag float? And it would have to be made of some pretty sturdy stuff to withstand whatever chemical stew the Jovians call an atmosphere. Some people are theorizing Jupiter might have a solid core, so you could stick it there? But then nobody could see it, so why bother...?"

Anyway, it made me smile, so I hope it does for you also. :D I completely agree with the rest of your post. It's just...good to be discovering things and exploring and doing the whole Star Trek bit. Because that's what humanity does. We explore things.

From: