The US government has spent trillions of dollars since the coronavirus pandemic began, and is expected to spend trillions more on the economic emergency. Questions about where that money is coming from are starting to be asked, and if there’s are any place to cut, it’s the Pentagon.
Spending $700 billion-plus annually, the Pentagon is the largest discretionary spending item in the budget. Outspending every other nation many-fold, the Pentagon could sustain some big costs, and some of its costly weapons schemes could be on the chopping block.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper confirmed in an interview with the Associated Press that the “day of reckoning” is coming for the Pentagon’s budget, and that they may soon be expected to tighten their belts.
This is going to lead to another round of battles in Congress, with some difficult-to-justify budget items sure to come up for review, and nuclear modernization in particular is a big expense that may find newfound resistance.
… I’d bet on the Surveillance State coming out on top of both the Warfare State and Welfare State in the fight for the trough.
They have everyone’s dirt, after all…
I wouldn’t bet on any cuts to the Military. Social Security is the more likely target for the right wing crowd that holds power in Washington.
It’s a lot harder to cut non-discretionary Social Security spending than it is to cut discretionary military spending. The latter requires periodic appropriations, the former is automatic and permanent unless repealed. At least until, like all Ponzi schemes eventually must, it implodes on its own.
All pension insurance plans, SS included, are based on mean life expectations. Through my last employer I am insured in a well known plan. I chose payment by an annual which means until I die [1]. Because I am 91 I have taken out more than I have paid in plus interest. I simply have lived longer than the plan expected. You must call that a Ponzi scheme too even though my insurer is highly rated and respected.
There is a fundamental difference between my private pension insurance and SS which you ignore. My insurer can go bankrupt. The government cannot go bankrupt. As long as Congress has not changed SS payments the government is constitutionally oblige to pay.
P.S. Is Medicare a Ponzi scheme too? Again, it cannot go bankrupt. A private health insurer can go bankrupt.
Private medical insuring is living on a volcano. Should our nation go back to it?
[1] If my wife survives me she will get a good fraction of the annual.
“You must call that a Ponzi scheme too even though my insurer is highly rated and respected.”
No, I don’t.
If you think that government programs — and governments — can’t go bankrupt, you neither understand bankruptcy nor have studied history.
You deviously misquote my writing. Fie! Fie! I wrote that our government cannot go bankrupt. I did not write that government programs cannot go bankrupt.
On the first I appear to be in good company of many experts.
Karl Marx was correct on one thing. All historically known economic systems have been Ponzi schemes and the current one is a Ponzi scheme too. Moreover, all of these Ponzi schemes have produced piles of premature dead bodies.
Slavery here was a quintessential Ponzi scheme and it produced more than 600,000 premature dead.
Here is the basic reason why our current system is a Ponzi scheme which will produce recessions and depressions at more or less regular intervals. All businesses are based on the Ponzi assumption that their clients will always have enough income, wealth, or both to purchase their products and services. If that fails: poof! recession. Our system has also produced the Ponzi scheme of the production of goods and services abroad by cheap labor. Our economic system has Ponzi written all over it. And ours has already produced multi-millions of premature dead.
I didn’t misquote your writing, “deviously” or otherwise.
The life expectancy in US has been falling now for few years in a row. I have not looked actuarial studies lately.
Yes, states can and do go bankrupt. They are no different then households. Self-sustaining households managed for centuries to produce what they need, do not borrow, sell surplus, do not buy unless needed. Global casino has just made everything more unpredictable.
Financial scheming for all.its oiling of growth, ends up in grief.
Emphasis on profit undermines the profitability, until it destroys it.
About time we cut back on the world’s biggest Welfare Queen. The Pentagon is a greedy parasite that is killing it’s host.
There are tens of thousands of major companies, subcontractors, and other government parasites feeding off the world’s biggest welfare queen. And there is at least one of them in not more than one, in EVERY US House district in America. All you need to know as to why the welfare queen keeps getting fed.
Put on your Honeywell knee-pads, Lindsey Graham, there is much work to be done.