If people are so worried about deficits, please consider the $33 Billion elephant in the room.

[izzybeans]

http://it.usaspending.gov/

It's not just the wars, its the empire of bases worldwide that is sucking us dry.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. That's just the IT budget of the DOD. The real budget is about $900 billion a year.

http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

[izzybeans]

3. Unfortunately it's the only graphic I could find

at the time.

[inna]

10. yeah, i was just going to say... $33 billion is peanuts, relatively speaking...

on the grand scale of our total defense (offense?) budget....

[izzybeans]

11. I want to find a similar graphic that has the overall total budget

i figured the IT budget could stand in as representative of the ridiculous disparity between spending on defense and domestic spending.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. If we were to close nine out of ten foreign bases, the personnel on the

remaining 10% would outnumber the foreign-stationed military of all other countries combined.

Why do we seem them as necessary when NOBODY else in the world does?

It doesn't even make sense in a rapid-deployment scenario, as they are not used for that. When we went into Afghanistan we didn't deploy troops from Europe within 48 hours - we deployed from the States in 48 days.

The only reason we 'need' them is because the military SAYS we need them.

[PVnRT]

4. Forget social security, defense spending is the third rail

We're so propagandized, as a whole, in this country that any attempt to try and cut it significantly is pretty much career suicide.

[izzybeans]

6. Sad but true.

[izzybeans]

5. I just started reading Chalmers Johnson's Sorrows of Empire

http://books.google.com/books?id=KbQNfg0ws-IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=chalmers+johnson+sorrows+of+empire&client=firefox-a

It's striking how similar the fall of Rome and the contemporary U.S. predicament parallel. The debt fueled by militarism, the decadence of the ruling class, and the weakened democratic institutions, etc.

[Winterblues]

7. "Reagan Proved Deficits Don't Matter"..Dick Cheney

:shrug: Cheney would never tell a lie so don't understand why so many Republicans are worried about Deficits...

[RC]

8. Until 6 months age the republicans were not worried about deficits.

What changed for them?
Oh yeah, that fringe, far left, liberal lunatic , socialist black guy that tanked the soaring bu$h economy by taking an oath on 1/20/09. I almost forgot.

[Doc_Technical]

9. We could save billions of dollars

if we de-activated one carrier strike group and
two ballistic missile submarines.
We should also revert back to the corporate and
personal income tax rates of the early 1950s.

[redqueen]

12. K&R