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Defense Chief Urges Big Cuts In Military Spending
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says the Pentagon is wasting money it will no longer get, and focused on targets as diverse as the large number of generals and admirals, the layers of bureaucracy in the Pentagon, and the cost of military health care. 'The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, opened a gusher of defense spending that nearly doubled the base budget over the last decade,' Gates says. 'Military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny. The gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.' Gates, a Republican who was carried over as Defense Secretary from the Bush administration, has already canceled or trimmed 30 weapons programs with long-term savings predicted at $330 billion, but is now seeking to convert as much as 3% of spending from 'tail' to 'tooth' — military slang for converting spending from support services to combat forces. While this may not seem like a significant savings in the Pentagon's base budget, cuts of any size are certain to run hard against entrenched constituencies. Gates's critique of top-heavy headquarters overseas was underscored by the location of the speech — the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. President Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II, warned the nation of the menacing influence of an emerging 'military-industrial complex' in his farewell address as president in 1960. 'Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals,' said Eisenhower, 'so that security and liberty may prosper together.'"
This will be spun as a Democratic administration not "supporting the troops", despite it being proposed by Gates, a holdover from a Republican administration. Much like how only Nixon could go to China, only a Republican can advocate cutting the defense budget (even if only a mere 2-3%) without being pilloried as near-treason.
Eisenhower said:
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html
I wonder why people always ignore that part.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It definitely goes against the grain of what we've seen before now.
Stating the obvious usually does.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Indeed.
If there really is going to be some "tail-to-tooth" transfer of spending, it'll be a very welcome change.
However, I am a bit peeved at the mention of "military healthcare". Given the atrocious cuts in services for veterans who've been injured in combat, I think that is the one area where the government needs to do more.
After all, if we ask people to lose limbs for us, it's only fair if we at least take care of them, when they come back from the battlefield with life-altering disabilities. It doesn't really matter what wars they were fighting. They are OUR soldiers, and it's our duty as a nation to support them, regardless of whether we support the politics that brought them to the battlefield.
Does this mean major cutbacks on corporate welfare and job security clearances for US Persons?
I'd love to get an engineering job outside of the defense/military industrial complex, maybe this will finally make the other jobs on the market relatively more competitive! And maybe I could get to apply some of the mechanical/aerospace skills I learned in college finally?
Corporate welfare through defense spending has been an awfully good way of keeping the educated middle class too busy doing busywork to try to enact any kind of social change. But maybe mass entertainment has finally caught up with keeping those minds preoccupied with inane things.
"Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, not one, and we could explore space together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace." -Bill Hicks
Living With a Nerd
I remember reading somewhere that Eisenhower was the president to most significantly cut the military budget in the past 60 years.
Anyone else who tried to do it was labeled as "making America weaker" or a giant wuss. But it was much harder to call the man who lead the largest amphibious invasion in history a pussy.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
> It's nice to see Mr. Gates being so active in his retirement. After running Microsoft for so long, running the US Military must be a nice break for him.
> It looks like he's using his business acumen to streamline the military.
Don't worry. Military spending will come to a screeching halt when he's done with Operation Bluescreen!
Military spending has been increasing at an unsustainable rate for at least the last 30 years. If it continues to increase at this rate it will surely bankrupt us. Our heavy investment in the military (over other important things such as education) also suggests that our priorities are badly skewed and need to be realigned.
Facts have a liberal bias.
Makes sense to me. America is in a huge economic hole and desperately needs money pumped into infrastructure, health, job creation and other areas of government. America spends more on the military than other developed countries combined, so even a slight reduction in this should reap rewards in other areas. And if the US is smart about how it cuts spending, it does not even mean the military need become weaker as a result. Spend smarter, not 'harder', I guess you could say.
When your budget is greater than your earning power, things must be cut. That's just the way it is and anyone with a brain can understand that. As such, I expect that the US Military will accept the cuts logically and maturely... Much like the Greek people.
That is literally the only area of defense I support increasing funding for. I find it funny (and sad) that the people who most loudly proclaim to "support the troops" don't really give a shit about them once they're back.
I may personally want to cut defense spending and often not even respect the troops or what they're doing, but as misguided as I think they are, they sure as shit deserve support when they come home missing limbs or with PTSD. It's disgusting the way most soldiers end up due to the way we toss them aside once they've used up their usefulness.
The man is awesome. He cares for America. Basically, another Eisenhower. Obama has a group working on figuring out how to cut the deficit and balance the budget. That group needs to have EVERY head of each dept. tell them how to cut waste for each. Finally, that group needs to push for a balanced budget amendmendment that will block the running of deficits during good times. Right now, the majority of our unneeded debt is from 1982-1990, and from 2002-2007. That accounts for about 8 trillion dollars of a time when we had a decent economy and had ZERO reason to run a deficit.
Personally, If Robert Gates was to run for president (or even replace Biden) , I would vote for him.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you study the events leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the size and rampant spending of their military-industrial complex as it slowly bankrupted them for thirty years comes out on top. Everyone knew it existed, and everyone knew it would suck the nation dry before they could "win" the Cold War against the United States, but it was so entrenched in their economy that the means to measure and control it simply did not exist. It's interesting to see that Eisenhower noticed this disturbing trend fifty years ago. If the Soviet Union was bled dry in thirty years, how much longer can the United States survive the siphoning of hundreds of billions of dollars from their economy? Or is it already too late?
American citizens really must ask themselves what this spending has done for them. Access to foreign oil? Protection from terrorists? For a fraction of the trillions of dollars spent in the past decade on "defense", those issues could have been resolved virtually overnight. Instead, you have made a select group of people very rich and very powerful. Was it worth it?
Eisenhower and DOD created DARPA as a way to guarantee that we had fundamental RD being done. That group has been responsible for keeping American military on the cutting edge. W converted it from a mix (basically university, business, etc) to a great deal of money to just business esp. into Texas. That has come at the cost of long range basics. That needs to be changed back. We do need a better way to get our RD into the field, but not at the cost of the future. In addition, more of the RD needs to funnel back to either American business, or at least Western business, with all of the work in America/West.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial-congress complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
I know it's complex, but if you ignore the political implication aspect you're devaluing the entire notion.
You can't take the sky from me...
Well, we're doomed then. For the majority of USA "citizens," if it doesn't exist on American Idol, it doesn't exist.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Indeed.
If there really is going to be some "tail-to-tooth" transfer of spending, it'll be a very welcome change.
However, I am a bit peeved at the mention of "military healthcare". Given the atrocious cuts in services for veterans who've been injured in combat, I think that is the one area where the government needs to do more.
After all, if we ask people to lose limbs for us, it's only fair if we at least take care of them, when they come back from the battlefield with life-altering disabilities. It doesn't really matter what wars they were fighting. They are OUR soldiers, and it's our duty as a nation to support them, regardless of whether we support the politics that brought them to the battlefield.
I firmly agree. One important point that Gates misses is that military personnel and civilian employees of the military often have much lower salaries than the equivalent private sector positions. One of the main reasons that many people make the choice to serve directly rather than as, say, a contractor is that the government promises job security and health benefits. In other words, many people are choosing stability over paycheck. If Gates is going to reduce the "stability" portion of that equation, then he will need to either increase the pay for those remaining or be prepared to hire more contractors to get the job done.
Soildiers, sailors and marines, as well as their families, earn everything they get. I would hardly call it an 'entitlement' program to give benefits to people that we ask to give up their youngest, healthiest years and spend them slogging through mud, risking their lives; or for their families to have to sit back and wait, wondering if their spouse/parent will come home in one piece, if not alive. I'm not saying this because of the "rah-rah-rah" stuff, I'm saying it because there is a world of difference between soldiers earning keep for themselves and their families and, say, welfare. "Back in the day" there might have been something to be said for perhaps a tiered system where those "in the rear with the gear", who were at less risk, didn't get as sweet a deal. But, as we're now in wars where there really aren't front lines and safe zones, where anyone is a potential enemy and you're just one grenade away from death, even at the supply depot, there really isn't a whole lot of difference now.
http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1467
I found a lot of the media coverage to be selective, and the headline on this /. posting to be somewhat misleading
The alternative is that the soldier's enroll their family into a healthcare program and pay for it then? Ok, cool. So they will remove the benefit from the soldier and pay him the value of the lost benefit so he can then pay for healthcare. It's not like it's the whole family, only spouse and children under 18. No parents or other family, just dependants.
Besides, have you been to the military hospital? Trust me, it's cheaper to leave the military healthcare as it is.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
No. Healthcare is considered a right in most of Europe. One of the big pushes has been to provide healthcare for everyone.
The military healthcare system for veterans and their families is an absolute necessity. Soldiers get payed crap, they deal with a job that curtails their constitutional freedoms, a job where they have to deal with the trauma of violence, death, killing and risk being killed/maimed themselves.
You want to cut the military pay roll? Fine. Reduce recruiting, let old soldiers retire. But each and every one of them needs what little help and compensation they do get and deserves more.
Because it really makes sense to have a parallel health care system only for soldiers?
VA hospitals are a pretty good system, but they should really be for everyone, not just ex soldiers. Public health care is good for everyone, not just people who were in wars.
-josh
Your comment makes me rage. If you were close enough I kick you in the junk so hard your grandchildren would still be feeling it...if you were still capable of having them.
The military is NOT the "largest entitlement program in the country." It's not even fucking CLOSE.
Maybe you should take your ignorant self over to http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258 and read the very simple article that breaks out the spending. The U.S. Military budget is about 20%, Social Spending is about 55%!
So no, I'm not kicking you in the junk for slagging the military although that irritates me as well. I'm kicking you in the junk for being ignorant of the real budget numbers.
I supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but I do not support the way they were handled. I do think the military-industrial complex should have been abolished long ago. Why? Because what has it done to protect us, really? Vietnam? It didn't help us win. Grenada? Yeah right. A banana republic with a few Cuban troops that our Salvation Army could have whipped. Panama? See above. Gulf War I? We didn't win that war, remember? We stopped just short of victory, a violation of one of the most fundamental principles of war that history has ever taught us: never leave an aggressor intact. We had to go back and do the job right in 2003. Somalia? We were trying to help those people, they started shooting at us, so we left. Confrontation with Saddam's forces while enforcing the no-fly zones and inspectors? Come on. We had about 20,000 troops in theater at the time. We don't need to spend $400b a year to maintain THAT, or any of our other troop commitments around the world. Iraq War and Afghan War? We took an army with a military doctrine of slowing down a Soviet tank advance across Europe just long enough for our ICBMs to reach Moscow, and tried to use it to fight two major land wars in Asia. Big mistake. We SHOULD have immediately instituted a draft after 9/11, converted factories to war production, raised a massive army (like, 5 million men), and when the time was right, rolled into Iraq with at least a million strong. The PROPER way to occupy a country you defeat is to make sure your occupying troops are in every city, town and village so they can establish ORDER. That wasn't done. You can only spread 100,000 troops so far in a country if 28 million. And we have all seen the results. They always make the same mistakes, thinking you can do war "on the cheap". You can't. But I am encouraged by Secretary Gates' plan. It may be a step in a direction we should have gone in decades ago.
Zooperman
The support given to veterans is not "military healthcare." That bill is footed by the VA which is not part of the military. Gates, to his credit, took strong action when the problems at Walter Reid were first exposed, and top brass lost their jobs. This is one of the few people from the previous administration that has earned my respect.
"I would hardly call it an 'entitlement' program to give benefits to people that we ask to give up their youngest, healthiest years and spend them slogging through mud, risking their lives; or for their families to have to sit back and wait, wondering if their spouse/parent will come home in one piece, if not alive"
It's voluntary. Nobody is asking anybody to do anything. If they don't want to do it, then they shouldn't sign up. Why people sign up with families, I'll never understand. None of the "wars" that we are involved in are defensive, or even necessary. If enlistment drops by 90%, we'll still be able to DEFEND the country just fine.
I don't respond to AC's.
I'm sure this is all political and we'll continue to police the world. They're not coming home until the dollar outright collapses, which is probably not far off. While we're at it, how about cutting a couple TRILLION off the $4 Trillion budget!?!?!?
And *you're* qualified to determine what's a massive waste of money? *I* think Social Security and other entitlements are a waste of money, but that's because I'm 27 and not going to see a penny of it. So, frankly, leave it up to experts to decide if it's a waste. Mr. Gates seems to have a fine handle on the situation.
There will always be terrorists--does that mean that we must always have war? If we do have war, does this mean that we always have to fight in in the quintessential American way--throwing massive amounts of expensive resources at our enemies at an overwhelming rate?
That strategy is great for WWII and for duking it out with the Soviet Army at the Fulda Gap, but it isn't very sensible for a long term war against a loose coalition of poor, ideologically committed killers.
We're spending tens of thousands of dollars per terrorist kill. If we're going to fight terrorists successfully we need to do it on a budget. Our irresponsible spendthrift congresspeople can only see as far as the money that defense industries bring to their regions. Military spending can easily become just welfare for the upper classes. Gates' point about the military being topheavy with generals and admirals is important. The military leadership is committed to propagating itself and will never act to make its command structure more "lean and mean."
We've remained in Iraq and Afghanistan all these years because our military is a $700 hammer and those countries happen to be the nails that our country's warhammer is adapted to. That approach isn't working and we can't afford it forever.
Actually, yes, it is good to have a parallel health care system only for soldiers. The physical and psychological needs are vastly different than most civilian situations. We owe it to those who put their lives on the line for us to take care of them. We do not owe it to everyone else (including me) to take care of them.
On the other hand, the real scandals are that (a) the VA system is shockingly bad at providing good health care, and (b) if ObamaCare is not repealed, we will essentially get VA for everyone... except Congress, the president, cabinet officers, the politically connected and other "better than the hoi polloi" types.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Contrary to the posts above, our military might has other ramifications outside of defense.
On a similar note; when Britain ceased being a, if not THE World Power in their time, because of the reduced military spending the average British citizen's standard of living went up. (I think I read that in the Economist and I'm too lazy to find the cite.)p/>I for one hope to see the day when we, the USA, are not the World Power.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
> The military is NOT the "largest entitlement program in the country." It's not even fucking CLOSE.
Your link refutes your argument. Your link refers to three large entitlement programs with approximately the same size as military spending. These numbers are from your link:
* $715 billion for military spending ("some 20 percent of the budget")
* $708 billion for social security ("another 20 percent of the budget")
* $753 billion for Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP ("together account for 21 percent of the budget")
Your own source states that military spending exceeds social security spending (albeit by just 1%), medicare, medicaid, and CHIP. Only by combining *all* of them can you justify your bizarre "not even fucking CLOSE" claim. It's like saying that Bill Gates was never one of the highest paid employees of Microsoft because there were many other employees whose *combined* salary exceeded his.
In addition, "military spending" above specifically excludes veterans benefits, but if we're talking about entitlements they should clearly be included. Even excluding that, military spending--using your own data--is slightly larger than spending on social security, the largest of entitlement programs.
> Your comment makes me rage. If you were close enough I kick you in the junk
> so hard your grandchildren would still be feeling it...if you were still capable of having them.
I suggest consulting your own sources before getting so angry you consider assault.
The military is NOT the "largest entitlement program in the country." It's not even fucking CLOSE.
Maybe you should take your ignorant self over to http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258 and read the very simple article that breaks out the spending. The U.S. Military budget is about 20%
Except those numbers are a bit misleading. Why are benefits paid to veterans NOT included in the defense spending part of that chart? That money is certainly part of what we spend on defense. It's just a game to make it sound like less than it really is.
When I was born, America was the industrial giant of the world. Economic theory held that a positive trade balance was necessary to remain an economic power and that "consumer driven" societies were doomed to collapse under a mountain of debt. Since then, we have given up our manufacturing leadership in every area but one -- weaponry. The military industrial complex is our last big manufacturing exporter of hard goods. True we are selling death on a scale that Wall-mart might envy, but just like the Soviet Union in the 1970-80s this is what keeps us as a world power. Many might say "good riddance" to such a role, but this industry will not go down without a fight, something that is probably second nature. Many Americans will support them too. Mr. Gates may slow the acquisition of new weapons. However, it will only take one contractor selling a "latest and greatest" weapon to another country instead of US for all of that to change.
I put it to you that you are already bankrupt from overspending for the past 30 years. If the USA wasn't a nation that can just keep printing more money when required, or spend itself trillions into the hole, it would have been bankrupt years ago.
The Military/Industrial Complex that Eisenhower was warning against, got into power, and its been reaping massive fortunes for its Corporate Owners for that entire time. Look at Haliburton most recently.
Blackwater - when did the US citizenry decide it was actually okay for the country to hire mercenaries, and in fact let them equip themselves with a private airforce etc? Billions lost there.
Its long since past time for these cuts to be made - and in fact if the system were forced to trim itself down to ensure the "Tooth" part of the equation is still effective it would probably be very effective still - but the US budget is firmly in the grasp of the corporations that are making billions in profits for their owners off of defense spending, and the Military who naturally want all the high-tech tools and manpower they can get so they can be as effective as possible. You are not going to break that grip, ever. The politicians who are in office, BELONG to those companies, and if they want to keep their jobs, must keep supporting them I am afraid.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
*I* think Social Security and other entitlements are a waste of money, but that's because I'm 27 and not going to see a penny of it.
People have been wringing their hands over the looming demise of Social Security since before you were born.
The only real threat of you not getting your investment back is if the politicians find enough excuses to dip into the kitty for other uses, or if the people who want to transfer the whole kitty into the stock market finally get their way.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. "
I wonder if we will see similar thinking with respect to funding science?
-cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
http://www.iousathemovie.com/
"VA hospitals are a pretty good system" ...compared to the average American hospital.
(As good as the best hospital? No.)
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
if we don't provide what they want AARP is going to come wielding pitchforks on their golf carts?
Pretty much. Social programs keep human misery below the "bloody uprising" threshold, they are as important to social stability as police and fire services.
You can't take the sky from me...
It would be difficult for the administration to come out and say that they wanted to close bases without being labeled anti-military. However, trimming the "base budget" may not be the only thing that needs to be considered... Have they ever looked at some of the costs associated with operating stateside bases? I wonder what the costs are to operate the bases in Hawaii compared to operating the ones in Florida? Not just facility costs, but associated costs with shipping stuff out there, pay, etc. Same with some bases in California. Granted, congresscritters will have a cow if the military shut down large bases in "their" state.
I'm still trying to figure out some things about the military. For instance, the Air Force should be the aviation specialists, however, each branch has it's own planes. The Military Occupational Specialities cross all the branches: for instance every branch has a cook, admin personnel, police, etc. Why can't money be better spent cross training? Instead of having different cooks dependant upon the base, why not have one branch provide cooks? Or admin? Or intel? Or pilots? That might help clean things up a little. There could also be less bases if there then potentially less budget required.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
While I agree that we're spending too much on some weapons systems... there's absolutely no excuse to pay 7 billion dollars for a DDG-1000 destroyer...Gates is fiercely protective of the biggest, most expensive military boondoggle of all time, the Joint Strike Fighter. He will absolutely tolerate no talk of canceling it.
It was supposed to be the "cheap" supplement to the F-22, much the same way the F-16 was the cheap supplement to the F-15. But now the F-35 costs as much, or possibly even more than the F-22 (CBO estimate: $122 million a copy and climbing), while being a substantially less capable airplane. And this has happened under Gates' watch.
And yet, he balks at buying more Super Hornets for the Navy instead, at what is a bargain price in the fighter world... $45 million apiece. There's no logic here.
I'm as big a hawk as you'll find, but I think the primary problem is with two parties here... defense contractors, and Congress. Congress sees defense as a jobs program, and defense contractors are ripping off the taxpayer. I've come to the reluctant conclusion perhaps we should abandon private suppliers for the military, and go back to in-house supply solutions. For instance, the Navy used to build their own ships in their own shipyards. It was seen as a way to not be too reliant on private yards, and to keep them honest. God knows we need that again. I'm a big capitalist, and all for competition in truly free, private markets. But defense contracting isn't really a free market. You're serving one customer... the government. Maybe it's time to open up our own shipyards again, and revive the old Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia. Maybe that's the only way to put firms like Lockheed on notice that the gravy train is over.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'm writing this in Arlington, Virginia, and I believe that most of the U.S. military's overseas missions, such as the war on Iraq, are neither defensive nor necessary.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Easy. Stop all carbon emissions and atmospheric pollutants, and see what happens over the next few decades. If there's no statistically significant drop in the rate of temperature change, then carbon emissions and other atmospheric pollutants weren't the (sole) cause. Wait, is that what they're already asking us to do? See? They're not asking us to stop polluting because they know it's bad -- they're asking us to stop so they can get the data they need to falsify your claim that pollution isn't the problem. Just good science.
Military spending has been increasing at an unsustainable rate for at least the last 30 years.
No, the cost of individual weapons systems has been rising at an unsustainable rate. Military spending is a fraction of what it was during it's peacetime highs, when it dominated federal spending in the 50's and 60's. Bush the Elder made big cuts to the military budget, and Bill Clinton made even bigger cuts. Even at the height of our military force structure during the Reagan years, the military was a fraction of what it was under Ike, Kennedy, and Johnson.
What we're getting isn't more military spending, but less bang for our military buck, by buying fewer weapons. We're spending about the same, GDP-wise. It's just that individual ships, planes, etc, cost more, so we're buying less of them. We bought 800 F-15's. We replaced them with 187 F-22's. Same buck. Less bang, even though the individual weapons are more capable. There's simply no way one F-22 can replace 4 F-15's in the real world, no matter what Lockheed's marketing department says.
By far the largest and most bloated parts of the federal budget are the entitlements... Social Security, Medicare, etc. They'll bankrupt us long before military spending would. And while you can cut military spending, by law, you can't cut SS and Medicare, only their rates of growth.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
This is true, but only if you define "pyramid scheme" in such a way that Social Security is not one.
If you are anyone -- including someone currently on Social Security -- and expect to get a comfy retirement from Social Security, you are guaranteed to be disappointed. Social Security is not setup to provide a comfortable retirement, it is setup to provide a minimal safety-net pension to mitigate (not eliminate) poverty among those who have worked but can no longer do so due to age or disability.
Weak "means testing" is already implemented, since Social Security benefits are taxable income if your total income is above a certain point.
For the reasons in the preceding response, SS beneficiaries with other sources of income already get less money from Social Security. Since Social Security is insurance against poverty due to age or disability, this makes sense.
This is scaremongering with no basis in reality.
Don't get me wrong, I was merely disagreeing with Shakrai's comment, which was pretty limited in scope. Sure, I agree that if you're going to field an army that you'd better make sure its soldiers don't have to worry about whether their families have food on the table or their kids can go to the doctor when they get sick. (But that's also part of why I don't think we should field so many unnecessary armies in the first place.)
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
So what you are saying is that the people who are closest to horrible tragedy often have their judgment clouded by the desire for revenge that goes along with such atrocities, even to the point of not being able to make rational decisions?
Agreed, that happens, and its why hot heads make bad policy. Its why we should outlaw naming bills after murdered children. Its why we need to roll back the majority of post-9/11 changes. Its why the civil libertarians need to yell the loudest when everyone else is the most sure that its time to give up some liberty.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Unless your workforce continued to increase, social security was never sustainable anyway. It was only possible over the past 40 years because of the baby boomers. Without another similar increase in workers, and another one every 40 years, it'd be impossible for the taxes collected to keep up with the people retiring, especially as they're also living longer.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
> Because some people want to ensure a future for their children? Is that really that hard to
> understand?
>
> I'll grant you though that the need to do so may or may not exist today.
No not at all, though, what IS hard to understand, for me, is how anyone, who hasn't had their head in the sand for their entire life, equates signing up to fight whoever congress and/or the president says to fight with ensuring a future for their children.
So far, they have a piss poor track record when it comes to picking the fights that we need to (or even should) fight. So far they have shown absolutely no shame whatsoever when its come to provoking the start of conflicts for political ends (a tradition going back far enough that Lincoln himself was nicknamed "Spotty Lincoln", long before he was president).
Aside from the revolution (which wasn't fought under the current government), the war of 1812, WWI, and WWII, I am having trouble thinking of a conflict that Americans needed to fight to ensure the future for their children.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
SocSec would be eminently sustainable if it were pegged to the average life expectancy with a 5 year lag between the rate and when it was implemented. Which is currently over 77 years old.