Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General "Go Jan ! "

Rep. Jan Schakowsky,Debt Commission...at Does'nt Raise Taxes On Middle Classl

Just as a matter of practicality, can someone tell me what the effect on the economy would be if we slashed $100 billion in defense spending?

Cut down on troops? These are career military. Not that they can't get jobs because they are military trained, it's that they cannot get jobs because there are no flipping jobs. And what is the morality behind telling these people that we've used them and now we are not going to keep them around until they can retire?

We cut down on buying munitions. What percentage of the money we spend on buying $50 billion worth of munitions is direct salary? How much is indirect salary (multiplier effect at work)?

Granted the resources that we don't use for munitions go back into the pool to make prices lower for those resources. BUT! Those resources include labor force.

Please! Please! I am not arguing against these cuts. I just want to know what the real cost is going to be for our economy. And it certainly does not translate into a savings in tax dollars because incrementally we are not spending tax dollars on these "items." We are spending borrowed money. All the $110 billion cut in spending is going to do is decrease our deficit. NOT that that's bad. But what happens to the people?

I have no problem with defense cuts, can we cut welfare by the same amount? Defense spending creates and maintains jobs within the industrial infrastructure. Welfare creates no jobs and discourages ambition. $100B out of each, I all in!

Perhaps by the same proportion....?

If one looks at the relative expenditures of other countries, our "welfare " expenditures are similar, or perhaps less. Where as our military expenditureas are excessive by any comparative measure.

And those very countries are having troubles making budget today. Greece has gone under, Spain is going under as is Ireland. Italy isn't far behind the trend and France is on the cusp of having a serious domestic uprising. If you live in an industrialized country in Europe you are either cutting costs or going under. If you are cutting costs you are getting lectured by the Obama Administration that you should be spending hundreds of billions instead of cutting hunders of billions.

If Social Security isn't addressed now, it will not survive without massive tax contributions. The trust fund has been stolen by Congress and the Fed is looking for a way to write off the theft of those funds. So, they want means testing - something I am not opposed to except that Socuial Security is not a government program. It is a governemnt managed trust fund. So, in effect they are telling people who make a lot of money that they have to pay a tax to support the people who don't have to pay that tax. They want to raise the retirement age - Once again I am not opposed but I am ole enough that it will not apply to me.

At best, "Jan" is being disingenious or she is just dumb, or she has never balanced a checkbook in her life. I repeat, Social Security is a pyramid scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud. I will go one step further, since Social Security is allowed to exist, what Bernie Madoff did wasn't really all that bad. Our government is doing the exact same thing to potentially hundreds of millions of investors, and they get praised for being decisive.

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During the Second World War, the government provided for the basic needs of millions of people it employed overseas, and provided full employment at home. Moreover, it somehow managed to deal with the enormous debt that this mobilization created.

IF the American people shook off their delusions, girded up their loins, and faced the necessity for a total PEACEFUL mobilization for the "moral equivalent of war", then there would be no impossibility in crushing the viper of militarism, transforming to a peacetime economy, and dealing with the many real challenges that face the 21st century.

Of course, that will not happen; the American people are far too pathologically insane, and their rulers are experts in confusing and brainwashing their human cattle.

As with the Germans of the Nazi Era, Americans will only begin to wake up when their country lies in ruins around them. That will occur at some point during this century, and then we will see what happens.

"During the Second World War, the government provided for the basic needs of millions of people it employed overseas, and provided full employment at home. Moreover, it somehow managed to deal with the enormous debt that this mobilization created."

Pray tell, how did the US Government " manage to deal with the enormous debt?"

Not by paying it, certainly. The gross federal debt in 1940 was $50.7 billion. It has done pretty much nothing since then except go up. At the end of 1945 it was $260.1 billion. And all it has done is go up since then.

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/
table 7.1, which is available as a download.

So they dealt with it by ignoring it is how it appears to me. And I will point out to you that the $260 billion at the end of 1946 did not include obligations for the assistance of veterans and their heirs. Who knows how much that was? Hundreds of billions, certainly.

When you get right down to it, the cost of WW II has haunted us and straitened our circumstances for 70 years. Exacerbating this was the amount of money the US spent fighting the Cold War, of course. One has to question whether the money was worth it. Fighting that same war bankrupted the USSR, and unless we get our financial house in order we are next.

I repeat my question:

What would be the effect of a $100 billion cut in defense spending?

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There could be many different effects---depending on what else you did at the same time!

"No fiscal measure is an island, entire of itself; every appropriation is a piece of the deficit, a part of the investment....

...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know whom the Military-Industrial Complex murders; it murders thee."

With deep apologies to John Donne. · ·

40 year old tanks, 30 year old trucks, loss of stealth capable manned bombers, de-emphasis of manned air force assets, lower fuel usage, fewer deaths in training, fewer deaths in combat, increased suicides and homicides in US as men trained to kill work through their redundancy and adjust to civilian life, lower ammunition expenditures, closure of some military bases, net loss of $30 billion in GDP.