The Pentagon Cannot Account For $21 Trillion

[Geoist]

However much is necessary to maintain our armed forces in order to protect our global trade, our global interests, and defend ourselves and our allies.

But it is interesting when it comes to domestic spending on, say, education, conservatives say more spending is not the answer. Suddenly, their tune changes on the military.

What makes you think we aren’t currently spending enough or even overspending on the military?

But that is not to say that our Defense Department (or any other Department) should not account for the money being poured into it.

Agreed.

 

[Geoist]

So the headline says Pentagon. A couple paragraphs down it's now Pentagon and HUD.

A small fraction. But every department should be accountable in their spending.

 

[VanceMack]

The fact you are getting so triggered over this only exposes you even more to be the true hyper partisan. Remember, Trump campaigned on the idea that Obama stripped the military of spending (which is a lie and highly misleading). Funny to see you accidentally contradict Trump on this issue.

:lamo


Man I do love it when people that have their stupidity pointed out fall back to the "you so triggered" comment. It only proves they know how stupid they were and were called on it.

Buh bye.

 

[Geoist]

:lamo


Man I do love it when people that have their stupidity pointed out fall back to the "you so triggered" comment. It only proves they know how stupid they were and were called on it.

Buh bye.

So the hyper partisan goes from crying about someone else’s ‘partisanship’ to trolling. Later, only want people willing to contribute to discussion in this thread anyways.

 

[Felis Leo]

But it is interesting when it comes to domestic spending on, say, education, conservatives say more spending is not the answer. Suddenly, their tune changes on the military.

Generally it depends on what the money is being spent on. Certainly, I have never heard of any government bureaucracy telling the taxpayers or the legislature, "Oh, we have enough money, really. In fact, if anything, we have too much and don't know what to spend our budget on! Would you please trim off a bit of our fat, because we feel too bloated."

The reason my tune changes on the military is because paying for and maintaining a massive standing army, air force, a global navy, and military bases across the world so that our armed forces can respond to any situation that arises, all while paying for the research and developing cutting-edge technology so that we are not dooming our forces to obsolescence is extremely expensive as well as complicated.

Education, in the cost of building and maintaining schools, staffing schools with teachers and administrative personnel, paying for education materials, etc., does not even come close to the cost of the military. Further, maintaining national defense is a national concern and ultimately effects everyone in the country, while education is generally a local concern of the states, counties, and municipalities. I do not see why the Federal government needs to be involved in any kind of centralized funding and planning vis-a-vis education, whereas centralized planning makes perfect sense in the realm of national defense.

In short, I am not against education spending. Rather, I am against people in California being taxed at the Federal level to pay for the education of students in Kentucky, and vice-versa. I think people in at the state, county and municipal level where the schools are located should determine what is best to spend on their children's education, and come to their own conclusions as to how to best fund that education. I believe the more local control of the educational situation, in which school authorities are directly answerable to the parents, the better.

What makes you think we aren’t currently spending enough or even overspending on the military?

That is a good question, and I claim no expertise in the matter as to what is presently needed. I think it should be inquired into as to what is necessary to pay for maintaining what we have, determining what is necessary for the future, and determining the level of force that will be necessary for sustained global armed conflict in the future. Again, I am leery of giving my complete trust to the word and assessments of potentially self-interested bureaucrats and their ostensible allies in the arms industry as to how much money they need, but I do not advocate ignoring them either.

 

[jimbo]

A small fraction. But every department should be accountable in their spending.

It's misleading to make a point that isn't there.

I agree, though, all departments should be held accountable. Most of these large discrepancies turn out to bookkeeping errors, but even errors should be accounted for.

 

[Hypothetical]

if both parties/sides could get mad, come together and demand accountability, we might get somewhere.

this is why they like to keep us divided, on either side of the aisle. It's not going to change until we make them change it.

We need to vote in third party candidates across the board. keep sending the establishment a message that they will do what we want or be out of a job. we probably ought to put most of them out of a job anyway.

vote in new people every single time until something gets fixed.

and yes open the Federal reserve to public scrutiny.