re: Its days like this where I feel do we need this much military?

We always see "National Defense" yet what are we defending?

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Yet trump is drastically increasing it while giving large corporate tax cuts and just adding it all on top of our already huge debt.

Don't worry about it though says trump, the American taxpayer can just pay for it with interest through higher taxes when he is gone and the Dems are back in power and have to clean up his mess. Sorta brilliant really. Cut taxes, spend more, blow up the debt, then blame the Dems for raising taxes to pay for all of it in a couple of years.

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Do you know how dumb you sound? Obama ran up 11 Trillion in debt over 8 years and you act like the Dems will cut spending and clean the swamp...

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Well, we could keep the military and get rid of about 80% of the rest of the BS the government spends out tax money on.

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i think our 1st biggest spending category is military. military spending needs to be audited and the way contracts are done needs to be changed. I think the second or third biggest spending category is the IRS. The tax code needs to be simplified (flat tax, 10 to 15% across the board with no deductions maybe?) and the IRS could be completely gutted. It's basically a jobs program for accounting students.

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Do the math and you'll see I'm correct. Cut the DoD budget by 50% and we're on the road to being conquered.

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What math?

That's BS

I do think cutting our military by 50% would destroy our economy. There aren't enough jobs available for all those unemployed soldiers

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you can cut military spending by half with other means than cutting half of the personnel.

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personnel costs are like 40% of the DOD budget.

You can also add all the employees of military contractors to the unemployed list

Reduce Social Security/Unemployment and Medicaid in half first, but you old fricks would shite your diapers.

The vast military spending is just part of a much bigger problem in our society regarding the expanse of the Federal government in our lives, and is the chief reason for being a staunch fiscal conservative and libertarian of sorts. We keep looking to government to keep us safe, and from whom? And so government is more than happy to answer the call and grow the size and scope of government in our lives at every turn.

Got a boogey man that wants to do us harm? Grow the military. Ever notice how we always have a boogey man who wants to do us harm?

Got some terrorists that flew some planes into some buildings? Papers please... Enter Ghestapo check points at airports where 80 year old white grandmas get strip searched because of their titanium knee. That’ll keep us safe.

Have some school shootings? Let’s have serious talks about assault rifles and the purpose of the 2nd amendment. Never mind that the overwhelming number of gun crimes are committed with hand guns, and in our inner cities amongst urban youth. It’s now the assault riffles that are the problem. Horse monkey fricken shite.


Hand it over to government, and you’ll end up screwing your entire life to hell and back trying to pay for it, and suffering the consequences of an all intrusive federal government as a result.

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What math?

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Go to .gov and look at where the money goes and start removing 50% of it - the military cannot be sustained on that type of cut.

You fricking idiots that think we have technology and shite that will thwart any enemy are living in a pipe dream. Not only that, these smart bombs and other items cost a ton of money. Cut the budget in half and our stocks of these things will dwindle each passing year, and we will lose the ability sustain a fight of any size, no matter how limited.

Cut the budget by 50% and there will be no carrier training. Then when we need the Navy, we will lose 25% of our planes in the first week due to inability to conduct flight ops, crashes etc. And we won't have fleet replacements either.

Cut 50% and we will no longer have forward, pre-positioned stocks that are essential to sustain a fight and we won't have the ships to move things either. We also won't have the aircraft. Mount an invasion or establish a foothold somewhere without the ability to resupply in a timely fashion and you will have entire ground units destroyed.

Cut by 50% and when you do send ground units they will be undermanned, undertrained, and underequipped - but you stupid, stupid, stupid, fricking idiots have no issues putting more Americans in the ground, which is exactly what will happen.

Sea lanes around the world will be taken over by pirates and our goods will jump exponentially in price. Then someone like Russia will step up and secure the seas and then we're under their thumb.

You people that think such drastic cuts to DoD are feasible are among the dumbest humans alive. It will decimate the all-volunteer force, which needs to be bolstered and preserved. Despite the wealth of technology out there, boots on the ground are still essential, and they must be trained and ready to go.

You ignorant fools don't want to attack the root causes of our problems: a population that gets dumber every year and votes accordingly (OP and his quest for a new TV is obviously part of this dimwitted group), a political class that gets more corrupt every year, and huge amounts of waste, abuse, and fraud.

Use the 1% rule - Take the budget and demand every agency return 1% at the end of the FY. Amend IRS so that regular taxes come in and people then pay an additional 1%. When you combine those, we stop running deficits almost immediately and we begin chewing up our debt in large chunks.

But since this is military related:
- Go to 4 day work week. Will save a few billion per year in utility costs alone for DoD
- Slot DoD civilians for 4 day work weeks, but don't change pay, instead alter retirement credit and leave accrual accordingly. Massive savings in the long run.
- Change leave accrual to 2 days per month rather than 2.5, for uniformed personnel, will save millions each year
- Implement cost of living increases for military pay every second year, rather than every year.
- Eliminate command discretionary funds: these are the funds allotted to large commands that they can use however they want and rarely do they use them for operational costs. Instead they go to ceremonies and other dog & pony bullshite
- Eliminate 75% of travel funding that isn't for training. People have no idea how much our senior people travel and they have no reason to. We have the most robust VTC networks on the planet. No one needs to fly to DC for meetings any longer.
- Roll back rank requirements for most positions and eliminate flag rank officers by 50%: here is the lone area where 50% works. We have an insane number of flag rank officers and they are not needed. Each one, naturally, has a large staff. Retire 50% of them immediately (they are all way past full retirement eligibility).
- Increase time in grade requirements for promotions. We've been promoting people too rapidly. Not needed.
- NCOs and Officers need to make co-pays on medications. People have no idea what sort of crap you can walk out of the clinic with, all 100% free. No sense in it.
- Longer term savings would come in if we expanded special operations training and manning. Though that costs on the front end, you can do more with fewer people and fewer dollars in places like Africa and Syria when you have special operations personnel compared to conventional units.

Just the above will get us to a 5% reduction in the DoD budget. Put 2% back into training and you still get a net 3% reduction.

Do an audit and guaranteed we can trim 5% from the DoD budget. There are many things I'm not listing or even aware of. I have no doubt we can get to a 10% reduction in DoD without any personnel effects and without any changes in capability.

But some of you fools just want dead American servicemembers which is where 50% takes us. It's fricking shameful.