Bush budget would pour money into defense
Will this fly with the American people?
Politico-President Bush’s 2009 budget, to be unveiled Monday, is expected to call for an almost $36 billion increase in core Defense Department spending, apart from the larger costs of maintaining U.S. military operations in Iraq and the overall war against terrorism.
An estimated $515.4 billion would be dedicated to defense including family housing and health care for troops, according to drafts of Pentagon documents, which highlight increases for new weapons procurement but also the huge costs of maintaining today’s professional military.
Military pay and health care costs would grow by $9 billion, an even larger increase than the $8.3 billion dedicated to strategic modernization.
John,
I thought you supported more money for ‘brain injured’ troops?
Americans are idiots. Of course we’ll love a “big spending” budget.
The nation needs an economic intervention, from an outside nation.
The states and cities which are experiencing huge tax revenue losses are demanding huge injections of federal money to put their people to work in higher paying jobs than waiters and dishwashers. They want hundreds of billions borrowed to fund infrastructure building. It will take $2 trillion just to bring all bridges up to standard. Then add all the roads adding 1/3 more population will require over the next 20-25 years and you have projects that go on for decades.
The problem is that we are running out of lenders. We have put ourselves in such debt that we can’t loan ourselves the money and now a “bond drive” would yield almost nothing. So, we borrow from Russia, OPEC and Asia.
There is no way out of this mess without a deep and long recession.
I should add, that “deep and long recession,” may not be for years, maybe even a decade or more. But, a crisis based on debt and constantly expanding debt requires people or nation stop spending so much and saving to get the debt under control. Thus, it isn’t the debt that causes the recession but the ending of spending in significant amounts.
That can be due people deciding to get debt under control or it can be due to nobody willing to lend them more. If it is the first, we can still have some control over how fast we slow spending. If it is the latter, look out.