How much cash do we spend on defense, really? Center for Defense Information budget guru Winslow Wheeler provides this handy chart. Check out the $50 billion increase in the “peacetime” Pentagon coffers — the money that doesn’t get spent on Afghanistan and Iraq.
And where does that money go? Healthcare, paychecks, and new weapons, mostly. Check out this Pentagon chart.
Pentagon’s Big-Ass Budget
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Where are we going to get the money to pay for all this?
I love how this budget is so mammoth that you can actually have a $5.2 billion “Misc” category.
That’s easy, it’s called the national debt.
Well, you could say, that the Department of Defense is never satisfied. You could say that all during the cold war. It is the same budget we had during Raygun. But there is something that is right, until I find out that it is mis-informatation later, and they spent the money on something else. And that is the money allocated for emergencies. You see, it went up–40 billion–in one year. Maybe they are spending some money the right way for a change. Boy, that would be great. You see, the one real feather in the Department of Defense’s cap these days is this. Everytime there is a disaster (earthquake-Packastan) or a tidal wave (Bangladesh) it is “our” military that responds. We actually use our military–to help people. Sometimes we don’t have much–we go anyway. Somwetimes it is just a drop in the bucket, but our military still goes. You see, they are making friends in foriegn countries sometimes, it is that simple. Our military shows up, they help, they make a few friends. But in other parts of the goverment, hell, they do less than that. So in a way, the military of the United States of America is pretty cool. They call it “peacetime operations” and they are very right for doing that. I hope to god they have some money budgeted to keep doing that. We end up being welcome in some places. Now there are other countries, France sends people’Spain sends tents, Germany might help. But it is our military, that loads up truck,planes, fork lifts, ships–damn, we just go. This is definately to our credit. In a way, America’s reputation around the world has been damaged. But when there is a disaster, the military just shows up, and they end up helping our reputation–through the military. Interesting. I guess that is why they call it peace time. s
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