GOP strategy on defense: Spend more, LOTS more
Last year, we spent more on our military than at any point since World War II, even after adjusting for inflation. But according to House Republicans, it isn’t enough.
Instead of cutting defense spending after our withdrawal from Iraq and pending wind-down from Afghanistan, they want to increase it. As U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN, “we’re moving dangerously close to the point where I don’t think we’ll be able to guarantee the security of the United States of America.”
That is also the position of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Instead of drawing down the number of active-duty personnel after the buildup to handle deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Romney proposes to increase active-duty troop levels by 100,000.
Romney also wants to spend a minimum of 4 percent of our gross domestic product on defense each year. In 2016 alone, that would mean an 18 percent increase — roughly another $100 billion a year — in projected spending on defense.
Again, this is what it looks like to be “dangerously close to the point where we won’t be able to guarantee the security of the United States of America”.
Source: International Institute of Strategic Studies
As the chart demonstrates, we spend 1.5 times as much on defense as the next nine biggest countries combined, and five of those nine are close U.S. allies who would be on our side in any fight.
– Jay Bookman
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529 comments Add your comment
Jm
May 14th, 2012
4:31 pm
Taxpayer btw
Do you prefer “non-floating” aircraft carriers?
Paul
May 14th, 2012
4:34 pm
frog
Yeah… but having spoken with some senior AF types at the Pentagon, they say nothing matches the Navy for political astuteness. Say those guys have embedded themselves with some of the career staffers and have quite the power.
regarding the academies:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21fleming.html?pagewanted=all
But hey, it costs only a half million per cadet, it’s a bargain!
TaxPayer
May 14th, 2012
4:35 pm
Taxpayer aircraft carriers are great tools
I don’t think we need to be spending money developing one that floats in the air though.
Oscar
May 14th, 2012
4:35 pm
Do you prefer “non-floating” aircraft carriers?
________
It would be cheaper to keep them in dry dock.
JamVet
May 14th, 2012
4:36 pm
Righty, for the love of Allah, you actually believed that idiotic slogan, “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” garbage?
barking frog
May 14th, 2012
4:36 pm
nuclear aircraft carriers
and subs should be most
of the naval fleet.
TaxPayer
May 14th, 2012
4:42 pm
The military also developed a nuclear hand grenade. At least they had the sense not to spend money equipping soldiers with more than one each.
barking frog
May 14th, 2012
4:42 pm
Paul
Navy has been around
longer but no sex appeal.
Pols love the handsome
pilots that zoom overhead
for photo ops.
Oscar
May 14th, 2012
4:45 pm
aul
May 14th, 2012
4:34 pm
_______
Good piece in the Times about the academies. Things sound worse than I thought. Even with the scandles from the Air Force Academy which were not mentioned in the piece. Agree with him about the athletic program. I think atheltic scholorships should be stopped and down to division III or dropped altogether.
UNCLE SAMANTHA
May 14th, 2012
4:45 pm
liberals should be in favor of INCREASING defense spending as long as it goes to making weapons and not wasted on wars in foreign lands
defense spending is a PANACEA for liberals
its government spending
its stimulus
it creates jobs
those jobs are union jobs
liberals just havent been educated to understand that pure defense spending on weapons is keynsian
Paul
May 14th, 2012
4:45 pm
frog
Well, ‘handsome’ isn’t a word I would have used, but I get your drift -
http://military-photo.blogspot.com/2008/12/us-airforce-female-pilot.html
Oscar
May 14th, 2012
4:48 pm
liberals just havent been educated to understand that pure defense spending on weapons is keynsian
____________
There are better ways to spend money. Infrastructure as an investment. Pays for itself in future grown. Unlike boms that just stored forever.
josef
May 14th, 2012
4:49 pm
Fresh sheets upstairs…
pogo
May 14th, 2012
4:50 pm
Jay why don’t you go ask all of those civilians and businesses that live near and work at military bases if they want us to cut military spending? Here in America at any given military base there are at least as many civilians that work there as there are military people. Entire local economies and local businesses depend upon these bases for their livelihood. Government provided jobs are government provided jobs whether they be military or otherwise aren’t they Jay?
You are one of the misguided Krugman Keynesians so what is your problem with government providing jobs through the military? Is it better when our taxpayer money is thrown away on such poorly administered and abused programs such as foodstamps, cellphones for the poor, WIC and a host of other government giveaways? The reality is, you liberals don’t have a problem with money being thrown away, it is just that you want it thrown away on the programs that comply with your ideology and the military is not one of them. Romney is actually for increasing spending for something that not only protects us but also provides jobs for the civilian sector as well. Obama has done neither of these two things with his “stimulus” and social spending. Liberals are idiots.
jeff
May 14th, 2012
4:50 pm
Jay is a moron who will not even admit that corporation pay income taxes. He claimed that a few years ago. First of all, Who are the 5 countries on the list that would be on our side in any fight??
The UK is the only one on that list that the US could count on and God bless them. France? India? SAUDI ARABIA??? HAH, You the biggest moron in the world.
Face it, If your a liberal which today all democrats are you are either an idiot or a liar because the left want a total control of society because they are socialist. This has been going on for decades and is getting worse. And for all you cool-aide drinkers out there that feel that being left is just the right thing to do and love to do the activist thing, when government gets total control the protesters and activist will disappear in the middle of the night along with all their families..
Lord Help Us
May 14th, 2012
4:54 pm
‘when government gets total control the protesters and activist will disappear in the middle of the night along with all their families..’
Yeah, but they will come get you before they come for me…
UNCLE SAMANTHA
May 14th, 2012
4:55 pm
OSCAR
the states PAY for infrastructure
that is why Obama’s STIMULUS didnt work
it was a transfer of money from Federal to States for work that was ALREADY to be SPENT
Jay
May 14th, 2012
5:03 pm
Wrong and wrong, Samantha. The feds, not the states, pay for the majority of transportation infrastructure. And contrary to your claim, the stimulus worked.
As to the stimulative effect of military spending, its impact is considerably less than in other forms of spending. For example, if you spend $1 billion building a highway, that highway will operate for decades and decades, providing services and helping the economy.
If you spend $1 billion building jets, those jets will sit return nothing to the economy. I’m not saying they can’t be useful if and when the time comes, but in strictly economic terms, they’re a much worse investment.
John Birch
May 14th, 2012
5:03 pm
What we needed was the Patton plan, take out Stalin and the rest of you commies like Josef quoting Churchill as if he were god, and we wouldn’t have needed the stable Europe. Unsordid act and great for the eurotrash sure like welfare is wonderful for the crack baby mommas. But it sucked for us. We rebuilt Germany and Japan (McArthur plan not Marshall plan) with modern mills while we were still running blast furnaces to the point where the japs could haul coal and ore from the US to Japan and turn it into steel then into cars ship them back and cripple Ford and GM.
But at least the Euros and Japs love and respect us right? Sure, just about as much as the Iraqis and Afghanis.
John Birch
May 14th, 2012
5:10 pm
Oh and of course after we won WWII there’s the tremendous damage the aging and unhealthy Roosevelt did us by totaling mismanaging the peace at Yalta. There’s a reason US troops have been stationed in Germany ever since. The Dems seem predisposed to cowardice; Carter, Clinton, and Obama with Kennedy and Johnson as the only recent exceptions.
Mike
May 14th, 2012
5:22 pm
Don’t worry about the military industrial complex, Graham, Liberman and McCain have been there all along, and are, to make sure there is always another war on the back burner.
It has been hilarious to watch them in action, over the decades. If someone in elected office said “draw down troops”, “withdrawal”, or worse yet “peace”, the three stooges immediately would run to get their mikes in their hand. Before 5PM, their press conferences were “in the can”, ready to roll. Nobody is going to stay in office, if they want to give peace a chance.
Mitt Romney is running on increasing the nation’s military budget 18%, from its present near all time high, even if it means more Americans starve, or die on future battle fronts (where ever those might be, it doesn’t really matter, to the hawks, so long as planes and bombs are still being made by their special interest).
Peter
May 14th, 2012
5:22 pm
Hey if you are in the military you can get a free boob job, siting depression over your looks……. Or if you are a fat wife of a serviceman, you can get gastronomic surgery at the tune of $50 K.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/military-spends-362m-weight-loss-surgery/nN5n6/
Seems the military has a free reign over what they can do and charge the American Tax payer.
Peter
May 14th, 2012
5:23 pm
Right on Mike !!!!!!!!
Don’t worry about the military industrial complex, Graham, Liberman and McCain have been there all along, and are, to make sure there is always another war on the back burner.
Get Real
May 14th, 2012
5:55 pm
Liberal strategy period…spend more…spend lots more
G Mare 71( got the living' the red state BLUES!)
May 14th, 2012
6:15 pm
Jeff, I have to ask: if you think Jay is a moron, why are you on his blog? And Taxpayer, good one with nuclear grenades
.
DBCOOPER
May 14th, 2012
7:38 pm
Jay 100% disagree ! I submit the fighter jet in deterance alone is worth more of the taxpayer investment. All the highways in the world are worth nothing if some else is using them. If you know what I mean. If the Left leaning American public doesn’t believe that there are governments in this world that would strike us at the drop of a hat, if they weren’t scared of the retaliation,. Then trying to debate on this blog is futile.
This is a very mean world we live in. Take a look at the past 25 years. Lesser countries are over-run all the time. Kuwait, Somalia, just to name a couple of the top of my head. Why do you not think North Korea hasn’t struck Japan? Because they know ‘Fighter Jets’ will come see Mr Hun in his castle. Come on?! All this means nothing if we’re not safe.
ODD OWL
May 15th, 2012
2:11 am
Mitt “Mucho Pesos” Romney’s cutthroat, vulture capitalist credentials at BAIN CAPITAL has rendered Mittens unelectable…
lovelyliz
May 15th, 2012
9:47 am
“Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Congress not to add items the military neither wants nor needs”
Common Sense
May 15th, 2012
11:17 am
Seems we are spending less. Lot’s less.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/14/152671813/50-years-of-government-spending-in-1-graph?sc=fb&cc=fp