We’re not in debt because of USAID. We spend $850 billion per year on defense. Suddenly $300 billion over 3 years is too much? When it’s weakening one of our top 2 adversarial super powers? That’s worth more than half the shit we waste our defense budget on.
Ahh yeah, continuing to try to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa is really a "waste of resources" et al.
We’re in debt mostly because entitlements, but also because our form of government lends itself to spending ourselves into insolvency. Our military budget is actually insufficient for what our national strategy states its purpose is - to fight two great powers wars at once. I’m all for slashing defense spending, but you can’t do that unless you drastically shift the direction of our national strategic footprint in the world. If you cut spending without disengaging from our duties as the global hegemon, we are doomed to fail.
..and it's not even cash! A lot of it is equipment we already have laying around..that god willing..likely would have never been used anyways.
We’re on the edge of becoming insolvent because all of our spending is on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security and the minute any candidate on either side of the aisle tries to touch it, we vote against them because we’re all selfish assholes.
I’m not saying not to do entitlements, I’m saying they are bankrupting our country along with all of our spending. Do you know how much entitlements cost? The system in place is incompatible with our demographic outlook.
Equipment that was apart of our war reserve materiel that we need to then pay for to replace. Or in many cases lately, top of the line advanced strike and anti-air missile batteries.
Yes. That is money well worth it.
We need to take a hard look at cutting all of our spending across the board. But we won’t. Democrats and republicans are all for cutting programs as long as it isn’t in their district.
War time reserve for fighting who? Russia? China?
So tell me where we cut to start putting a dent in our Trillions of debt?
Both, yes.
Bingo..and repurposing defense budget money to...you know..actually nation building might be a plus....then again fighting AIDS in Africa was a bridge too far for a lot of these people so God forbid we do things to try and build other countries up so they are more profitable down the line for us.
We’re not going to because it’s not politically viable. Any time someone brings up overhauling SS, Medicaid, and Medicare, the commercials showing you pushing Granny off a cliff start getting generated.
Sure. Where? What mission sets or capabilities do you want to divest of?
Did I say that? Did I imply it? Is that all you have for them saying something adverse? For Christ's sake....we have the GOP not even willing to admit he invaded the country...maybe just start there!
Anything having to do with major combat operations. Scale all mission sets down in sequence. MCO's can likely go last, but all the subverted irregular warfare can likely be dropped quickly. Again, we need to reinvest this money and rethink the DoD as an asset we leverage to build spheres of economic influence. I'm all for economic imperialism. There is at least an ROI there.
Which is something I have already stated that I agree with you on multiple times in this thread
I used to wonder how Penn State fans could defend Paterno during the Sandusky stuff.
Bullshit. You've done nothing but couch it(easy JD) in critiques of why Trump and Vance didn't (Big Z hurt their fee fees). You've consistently questioned why the US should do the right thing and back Ukraine. You continually give every excuse as to why Trump and Vance have cucked themselves out for Russia in the past and continue to cuck themselves out to Putin to this moment.
I think that’s a valid position. But Global influence and ability to exert economic pressure only goes as far as the nation’s military might is able to back it up.
it’s almost as if there are more ramifications for what our chief negotiators publicly say to the success in brokering a peace deal than what I have to say on an Internet forum.
It's been beyond fucking pathetic. There is a clear bad actor here. He's been doing it for a while. He's been doing it to Ukraine for over a decade....but rather than these bootlickers having any standards in our president pointing that out, we get a bunch of bullshit economic arguments about WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO?! KEEP PUMPING MONEY INTO UKRAINE!?
This does nothing to disprove the facts I pointed out in my post.
I love the schizophrenia of the right. On one hand..the meeting went perfectly fine up until the last 10 minutes when JD Vance decided to stop sucking in air like a dying fish through his fat mouth and chose to speak....which set this entire thing off.