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Reduction in military spending can cover public option...Can't it?
How about we cut the military spending, cut out any government spending on health care, and send me some of my tax money back? How about that?! Why is that never a freakin' option?!!???
Your logic is ridiculously flawed. Government spending done IN THIS COUNTRY, is the SAME, be it government health care or military. You almost sound like you are advocating increasing the size of the military because it "provides millions of jobs?"
The problem with military spending is, it doesn't all happen in this country. Our military personnel that are stationed in other countries, spend money in those countries. The money doesn't make a loop and come back to us, its just spent and gone in every country we have a foreign base.
We only need as big a military as we need to defense ourselves, anything more is poor allocation of resources. Even if we spent half as much as we do today, we would spend FAR MORE than anyone else. We could take that 350 billion a year, and take those displaced soldiers and rebuild America. Bridges, schools, roads, the levy's, health care, free education through college, etc etc.
Anyone who thinks we need to keep our military at the level it is now to just "defend" ourselves is a fool. We have something like 800 foreign bases in 100 different foreign countries. And anyone who thinks that its good that the government "creates jobs" through the military but opposes socialism, obviously has severe mental problems.
Yes we have soldiers stationed overseas.... they aren't taking the bulk of the spending in salary. They have pitiful pay for a very difficult job and are certainly not "waste". A lot of their spending is on base exchanges...which purchase supplies from the US. So no, their money is not being left in foreign countries.
A huge amount of the spending goes to purchasing our ships, planes, tanks, humvees and other equipment for our troops. That money is given to major companies in the USA that spend it among other US companies and give it to their employees and shareholders to spend.
And there is such a thing as "free education"....it's called the GI Bill, which is again military spending. I would much rather reward soldiers who have earned that through hard work and sacrifice for their country than cut that and give it to "low income" Americans as a handout. Which is all $350 billion would be able to accomplish, it certainly couldn't cover everyone. Same applies for "free healthcare"....it's called VA benefits and it's earned through service.
If the military budget was drastically reduced benefits to the troops would be the first things chucked out the window.
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