Cut the fucking Defense budget to pay for this.

[ThomWV]

That's all I have to say - cut the fucking Defense Budget first and then go to the other Agencies and start cutting them to make up any shortfall. Come to us taxpayers when there is no Agency funding left to cut but not one more bomber or tank or troop deployment until they fix the domestic financial mess.

[Democrats_win]

1. I'm for that. Or at least adjust CEO salaries for companies under gov't contract.

For instance make it so that any company receiving government contracts or loans should not pay any upper management employee more than 15 times the salary of the lowest paid person at that firm.

[The Traveler]

2. We're gonna have to do that

As a defense hawk, I have to say that cutting excess from the defense budget will not be enough. We will have to cut into bone. The simple fact of the matter is that we can no longer afford a defense capability of this magnitude. That means we will have to adopt a less aggressive foreign policy (a good thing, in my view), as well as accept other implications.

Regrettably, one of those implications is that we will be more vulnerable. That involves risks which are best addressed by beefing up and de-politicizing our intelligence agencies. Both of these actions are wise in any event. We can manage the risks a defense scale back implies. We will have to do so.

Another is that we will be far less able to rally to the defense of our allies. This will serve to shift the burden of defense expenditures to those allies ... they will have to invest more in their own defense. Again, I am not sure this cloud is without a silver lining.

The days of American hegemony are over. The neo-cons announced we had achieved an "end of history". They were, of course, deluded. Again. The world requires more than one pole, so it is inevitable that our unipolar arrangement was short lived.

All this may well prove traumatic to the ego of certain Americans, but it is inevitable at this point in our history.

Trav

[Brotherjohn]

3. That's what Clinton did to balance the budget and pay for many things.

The Reagan-Bush I years had jacked up defense to ridiculous (and unnecessary) proportions, all the while lowering taxes (mostly on the rich) so that none of it could even be paid for. More spending. More debt. Economy in crisis. An "adjustment" was LONG overdue.

Same situation this time (albeit worse). President Obama should do the same. Pay for it by scaling back out war-mongering ways.

Republicans will play the fear card: "Ooohhh! But how are you gonna protect us against TERRA! And look what happened when Clinton cut defense!!"

Well, my response to the first would be: I don't think hundreds of billions a year in Iraq have done one whit to protect us from terror, and in fact have made us more vulnerable to terror.

My response to the second: Bill Clinton could have spend 10 Trillion dollars a year and it wouldn't have protected us against box cutters. Oh, and that happened on Bush's watch. Clinton's head of anti-terror (Richard Clarke) tried to warn them.

[Freddie Stubbs]

4. Brilliant political move while we have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

You do realize that there is an election this year, don't you?