Administration officials say that President Trump is intending to order a new budget which will see a “sharp increase” in military spending, coupled with significant cuts to the EPA and State Department, along with substantial cuts to other domestic spending.
Details on what exactly this budget is going to look like are, of course, still a matter of a lot of speculation, but officials say that Trump’s intention is to find about $54 billion in increased spending for the military without touching either Social Security or Medicare spending, in keeping with campaign promises.
Since the election, President Trump has been talking up some very expensive military plans, including increases in the number of troops, ships, and warplanes the US has available, and has talked up more nuclear weapons recently, arguing the US needs to be unrivaled.
The expectation is that the EPA and State Department will be asked to shave tens of billions off their budgets. Trump insists the US needs to have more money to “win wars again,” saying that when he was younger people used to say the US “never lost a war.”
TRillions in tax cuts for the rich..massive military increases when we should be shrinking that spending since he already wants out of NATO.
trillions in nuclear bombs for who knows what the hell for.
and take away any spending that helps people helps the planet or even helps society like the arts.
i feel like this man lives in an insane world where no one is allowed to enter out of fear it would expose him.
He is only the drummer for an anti-democratic cabal.
A massively expanded military, and no State Department? What you wind up with is a great big army, and nobody who knows the names of the countries where it’s based. Nobody who speaks the languages of the places it’s bombing.
Nobody to attend the conferences that decide whether and who it fights against. No idle speculation: Trump didn’t have anyone to send to the Syria peace conferences.
If you increase the armed forces by 30%, spending an extra $300 billion a year, but you lose all your allies… do you wind up ahead?
In the first place we do not have any allies only a bunch of NWO leaches that don’t want to pay there fair share for the NWO . The NWO is our idea so they think we should pay for it .
Trump sucks.
WTF. Over the last 20 years the US has spent more on “defense” than most of the rest of the world combined. And we just put it on the national credit card. Where has that got us but broke and despised by much of the world?
Trump Will Ask for Sharp Increase in Military Spending
Will Try to Cover Costs With Domestic Cuts…
The USG consumes roughly 25% of the energy produced on
the planet. These resources are shrinking in a global market
that includes emerging economic powers China, Russia, and
India.
In order for the USG to maintain its status as an ‘Empire’,
it will use its military to control whatever resources available,
and can be taken at minimum risk. The Pentagon is evil, but,
its not stupid.
The corporate MSM won’t tell ‘us’ masses this. And, even if it
did, most are probably more wrapped up with the Oscars to
really give a damn anyway.
Trump could probably cover costs of his military buildup by kicking
off all those ‘foreigners’ in the USG that he claimed are hoarding
‘food stamps’.
Ah … the Republicans favorite scapegoat, Social Security and Medicare, why is that ALWAYS mentioned? Those programs are funded by a dedicated payroll tax. They have never added one nickel to the budget deficit.
When the funding for those programs is depleted, then by law the benefits are cut to match the revenue. Now I am not endorsing that we do nothing until benefits are cut but the point is that those are the two most fiscally responsible programs in the federal budget. They have never used deficit spending.
BTW I am a Republican but I am put off by this obsession, the Democrats are just as bad, they promise benefit increases that would deplete these programs more quickly.
there is no connection between the tax and the benefits paid out. Flemming v. Nestor 1960
Exactly, if the payroll tax cannot cover full benefits then benefits will automatically be cut to match the amount that can be paid in the Social Security trust fund. This is why no one can blame the SSTF for budget deficits and why cutting benefits will not help the federal budget. Cutting benefits will just extend the life of the SSTF at the reduced level.
then it just becomes unfunded mandates
If they want to stop paying social security and medi-care . they will have to stop taking contributions out of my children’s and grand children’s checks . I don’t care . Truth be told we do not have a very honest and efficient government . The gillotine would be the best tool for correcting this government
This country is making explicit what has been the trend for decades: our military is offensive, poised to attack several major nations at once all over the world. Defending our own environment and engaging in diplomatic activity just saps resources for empire expansion.
We don’t tell the truth when we defend the environment either
The Pentagon promises it clean up it’s accounting practices. Sarc/off!
August 16, 2016 Pentagon Cannot Account For $6.5 Trillion Dollars
A new Department of Defense Inspector General’s report, released last week, has left Americans stunned at the jaw-dropping lack of accountability and oversight. The glaring report revealed the Pentagon couldn’t account for $6.5 trillion dollars worth of Army general fund transactions and data, according to a report by the Fiscal Times.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/pentagon-cannot-account-for-6-5-trillion-dollars/5541244
Impeach him, do something. This is how he’s going to start to make America great again. The world is in great danger.
Somebody needs to tell Raimondo!
Not that I advocate ANY government theft from the people, but slashing military/aggression spending and putting it towards domestic spending (infrastructure repair, transitioning people off of the unsustainable programs of SS and Medicare, etc.) would go much farther towards Making America Great than empowering this and future emperors with more military might.
David, there’s only one way of making America great again and that’s by the use of military force that will sustain economic force through control of the world’s resources.
It’s the reason why Iraq and Afghanistan are big successes already and why Syria and Iran need to become the same sort of successes.
If it doesn’t happen then America can’t become great again because the looming competition by Russia, China, the Brics is going to eclipse the US/West.
You’re going to have to accept that you have to be ‘fer it or agin it’ David.
The cat is out of the bag. Apparently a 190% rise or about 64 billion dollar.
Justin, I think that you got royally scr…d.
Trump will be considering it money well spent dieter. And it will be if everything goes according to plan for making America great again.
Trump is under no illusion that Iraq wasn’t worth it, if you consider that he believes that he can do both Syria and Iran to make it really start paying big dividends.
It’s all looking forward to your futures dieter. If not then you are going to wind up competing with Chinese people for a bag of rice and 5 bucks a day for wages.
I mean fu-k dieter, the British didn’t give their emperors all this much flak back in the colonial days!
Typo. It was 10% not 190%.
Given my age I will almost certainly be dead before I need competing with Chinese people for a bag of rice and 5 bucks a day. Thanks for being so royal as to give me a whole bag of rice per day. That is a lot! People will stand in line at my door to get some!
Actually I was thinking more of a sack of rice to last a month. But that’s not the issue i’ve tried to raise.
The issue is, most Americans don’t appreciate or understand the reason why they have so many wars. They’re not for nought you know. And realistically, Iraq might not have been all that bad of a deal for the price. It would take a good rebuttal based on economics of it to say one way or the other.
I’ll start by saying that the US can’t afford oil at $100+ a barrel when it’s using about 20,000,000 barrels a day.
Bush started wars and cut taxes. He “paid for” the wars by deficit and running down the fixed assets like ships and planes.
Obama started more wars, and only tinkered with Bush’s basic concept.
Now our ships and planes and armored vehicles and everything else are unreasonably old and worn. The Air National Guard had an F-15 fall apart in the air, just break in half from being overage.
We can either end these wars and cut defense, or fight these wars by increasing defense. We can’t go on like this.
The wars have got to end. That is the only sane way to meet all our needs. We don’t get anything from the wars anyway, and furthermore we are losing them. We can only benefit by ending them. It is after all the original Bush mistake, just going on and on.
this is insanity
and perhaps the worst of it is, the cutting of all this domestic spending, with not a single penny coming from taxes on the the super-rich (though they will benefit entirely from all the new military contracts and hardware)….
we surely live in the end times…. global warming Eco-catastrophe….. or….. nuclear war/nuclear winter
“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone
are quite capable of every wickedness.” – Joseph Conrad
current Military Budgets of the World
(and I believe that the US figure doesn’t include all the extra appropriations for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, etc and interest on all the past wars, etc etc)
so the increase that Trump is asking for is essentially almost equal to all that Russia now spends!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
1. United States – 596.0 Billion
2. China – 215.0 billion
3. Saudi Arabia – 87.2 billion
4. Russia – 66.4 billion
5. United Kingdom – 55.5 billion
etc etc etc…..
Maybe Russia and China get more bang for each dollar spent .
I was fascinated that one of his justifications for this is that the military’s equipment has been overused and worn out.
Seems like an easy and cheaper solution to this problem on which we could all agree …… STOP USING IT SO MUCH!!!
great idea
True republicans always wanted the greatest military to keep us safe And than the democrats come along and say “what the use to have all these great weapons If we are not going to use them ” ? Madeline Albright in the destruction of Yugoslavia under Bill Clinton .