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Cut Down On Nukes To Shave the Deficit
Hugh Pickens writes "Joe Cirincione writes in the Atlantic that the US government is set to spend almost $700 billion on nuclear weapons over the next 10 years, roughly as much as it spent on the war in Iraq over the last decade. Most of the money will be spent without any clear guidance on how many weapons we need and for what purpose. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we will need some to deter nuclear threats from others, but do we really need to duplicate the entire nuclear triad for another 50 years? 'The Pentagon budget includes funds to develop a new fleet of 12 nuclear-armed submarines with an estimated cost of $110 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Also planned is $55 billion for 100 new bombers, and a new missile to replace the recently upgraded 450 Minutemen III intercontinental ballistic missiles. ... The consensus among military officials and bipartisan security experts is that nuclear reductions enhance US national security,' writes Cirincione. As the Nuclear Posture Review says, 'Our most pressing security challenge at present is preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, for which a nuclear force of thousands of weapons has little relevance.'"
We need a thousand nukes just in case we want to nuke NK and Iran a thousand times?
Wouldn't a hundred times each be enough?
North Korea and Iran are not the problem. We've got the fly swatters for that. It's China - which isn't a problem militarily now but certainly could be and Russia (or whatever the former CCCP morphs into) with an enormous number of powerful, accurate nucs and a large identity problem.
That said, the premise of TFA is correct - we don't need to spend ALL the money we're currently spending on nuclear weapons, but the hard question is what is a reasonable level and spread.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
As long as nuclear weapons exist, we will need some to deter nuclear threats from others, but do we really need to duplicate the entire nuclear triad for another 50 years?
That's why continued reductions treaties with Russia are important. Neither country is going to do this themselves. It's not as if both countries aren't actively reducing their arsenals.
Regarding the expenditures on bombers and subs... The thing about those is you need to always be building one or the industry dies. You can build it very, very slowly, but you need to be making one at some minimum rate or you'll lose the huge investment you put into learning to build them in the first place. Aircraft carriers are similar. The problem is that when you do this, your development costs don't get spread out so the cost looks enormous - but you have to spend that money or get out of the sub/airplane/ship business altogether.
There's an argument for that, but I don't think we're ready to give up our military power just yet.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
We currently have a stockpile of 5,113 warheads if Wiki is to be believed. We could get away with 1,000. That's more than enough to keep China and Russia scared via MAD. But as far as those other nations are concerned, we only to use *1* warhead EACH. That alone should be enough to inflict serious pain if not total collapse of the nations you mentioned. Just look at Japan. It only took 2. And they were far more dedicated at imperialism than the other nations you mentioned. NK is a joke anyways. Poor SOBs wouldn't dare fire off a nuke, unless "suicide by cop" was what they were after.
Life is not for the lazy.
We've got enough to radiate entire countries, why do we need more? Okay yeah, now Chavez has one or two
but this Jimmy Carter attitude
Seriously? Grow up. This isn't a "Jimmy Carter attitude", unless you associate Jimmy Carter with common sense.
How does leaving us at the mercy of our enemies enhance our security?
How does your Ronald Reagan fear mongering attitude help us? See what I did there? How in the hell does this "leave us at the mercy of our enemies"?
My work here is dung.
Woa, woa, woa, relax guy! The US still has enough nukes to turn the whole of Iran into glass and after that they would still have enough left over to turn Argentina into a huge sinkhole; and this is without spending an extra 700 billion.
As for defense of the homeland, a few well placed bunker busters would be quite enough to calm down any saber-rattling nation. Plus, the simple fact of staying home and not meddling would also reduce animosity towards the nation.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan are where the US should cut costs though.
~Syberz
One of the big expenses is the reliability of the nuclear arsenal. Nuclear material is hot - radioactive - and that means it's also "disappearing" as it decays. Triggers, main charges, and other elements of a nuclear warhead do age and this needs to be addressed. We've done a lot of work with computer models since we're no longer willing to test fire any of these weapons, even underground. But this only goes so far, and if you ARE going to rely on those computer models, then you HAVE to make sure that what was modeled is actually what is IN those warheads. If we don't do this, it won't matter how many missiles and warheads we have. They won't be viewed as a credible threat if we can't show that they'll actually work. And all of this is in support of the strategy of deterrence, which seems to be our only strategy so far, since we're not willing to forcibly stop proliferation. Whether deterrence is even a viable strategy going forward is certainly up for debate. But I can tell you this. If North Korea or Iran end up nuking us somehow, we damn sure better be able to flatten those countries, or else we should get used to the idea of getting periodically nuked.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
WTF do people think all the START things are? It stands for STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The US and Russia have been cutting back their arsenals for more than twenty years. The reason there is huge upcoming expenditures being budgeted for is because the US nuclear arsenal is pretty much late 1980's vintage. Nuclear warheads don't stay viable forever, and planes and submarines wear out. Most of the expenditure is going to be on the planes and submarines, not Nuclear warheads, and those planes and submarines have non-nuclear warfare use
The B-52 was designed as a nuclear bomber, but has probably dropped more conventional ordnance then all other aircraft combined ever. Most SSBNs around the world have been adapted to be capable of firing either non-nuclear IMRBM or non-nuclear cruise missiles. They aren't just sitting under the ice with a cargo of nukes waiting for the Russkis to push the button.
The expensive thing isn't nuclear weapons, it is launch platforms and manpower. If you start cutting those heavily you may as well cut the carrier fleets and a few army divisions as well and accept not having the ability to fight three different wars at once.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Let's keep arguing about cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits while this $700 billion dollar waste of cash silently slips by!
The distraction is working.
It's China - which isn't a problem militarily now but certainly could be
I think you'll find that China has discovered a much easier and more profitable way to conquer the USA. A strategy they've been using successfully against America for 20+ years. They're simply buying the country.
Why bother risk getting nuked when you can simply accumulate debt from your adversary. At some point in the future the amount of american IOUs that China holds will exceed the GDP. After all, America bought Alaska off the Russians, so why shouldn't the chinese simply cash in their markers, for (say) everything west of the Rockies. Some might even be glad to see that bit go.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Look at your biggest expenditure and start shaving it off bit by bit. That gives you the best return for the least amount of pain - And in the US that would be 1% off the militaries budget equating to many more % off someone else's budget. However the US is very conflicted about its military and how it uses it, and how much is actually needed ("we aren't the worlds police, but we can't not play that role"). But the population in general seems to equate military spending with greatness ("we can't let those god damned commies/terrists/gays/foreigners sneak up on us, like they did last time") so I can't see then ever agreeing to cut military spending.
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you got nukes. the nukes can't be used against chavez. the nukes are not meaningful against nk's supposed, future, nuclear forces, but tomahawks are. anyways, if usa cut back a little on their corporate benefits for select few companies you could have your nukes and cake too. just giving a check for someone to build "nuke stuff" with no idea of it's use is not the answer. and ICBM's.. well. you can't get any more ICBM than what you are already have done, that's why the nuke race stalled - nothing more to race for after having pictures of nukes that deploy multiple warheads nicely and impossibly to defend. so you're giving xxx billions of money to companies which will build a cheaper version and take more money for doing it.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"The consensus among military officials and bipartisan security experts is that nuclear reductions enhance US national security" citation needed for that.
I can't imagine cutting back while NK and Iran are arming up. Even Hugo Chavez is talking about going nuclear now. How does leaving us at the mercy of our enemies enhance our security? I'd like as much as the next person for nukes to go away entirely, but this Jimmy Carter attitude that the rest of the world is a cute cuddly place is horribly misguided.
Stop Iraq, Libya and Afghan wars. There is your savings and cost reductions. Keep our military strong here at home to DEFEND us.
Yeah, peace through strength! Amiright? Actually, if you RTFA you would see that the argument goes something like this: If all the big players agree to a NPT, they can all agree to take a strong stance *together* against other countries that don't agree with the NPT. What good is having 3000 nukes instead of 2000 nukes when all your enemy needs is just one to inflict serious damage on your nation? If we don't stand with the international community, we can't expect that our military is going to be able to shoulder policing the whole world for threats until the end of time. We will run out of money way before that happens. Oh wait, we already did run out of money. But can we figure out how to maintain security in a world where our military doesn't outnumber all other nations' combined? Hint: "More is better" is not the answer.
There are a lot of pockets to line before any of that money actually turns into rocket fuel.
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The amount of nukes around today is just insane. There is no real need for the amount that exists. Keep the nuclear submarines and then have a few land based nukes on ICBM:s and you will have enough.
The only reason why there are so many is because there is a fear that none of them will reach the target before being shot down. However that risk is relatively small.
What you really shall worry about is if a nuke is smuggled into a major port in a container and go off on the ship. That would take out the port for a considerable time.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
It did only take 2 to flatten japan, but you do have to compare the square mileage of japan vs Russia or china.
Area of china: 9,596,960 sq km. Area of japan 377,835. To do comparable damage to the same amount of area, as 2 nukes to japan, would be 50 nukes to china (ignoring of course the potential advance in technology potency etc of the nukes themselves). Admitted I would say 1,000 nukes should be enough, we have over 5k and are still working on making more which seems a bit obsessive, we should instead be spending money on say a technology to nueturalize nukes. Imagine the technical advantage of something the equivelent of an EMP field, but rather then eliminating electronics, it renders nukes coming at us inert. May be above our technology range now, but if we took 300 bil out of our nuke production, we could probably do it.
We only have a finite amount of money available to spend on the military. Maintaining nuclear weapons is a very expensive process, and when your nuclear arsenal could destroy the entire world multiple times over the question becomes, "Could that money be better spent on conventional weapons, ships, airplanes, etc.?" The majority of military engagements that the US expects to fight over the next few decades are going to be non-nuclear, and we will need plenty of money for guns, ammunition, fuel, vehicles, armor, and all the coordination and planning that a modern military operation involves.
I would read that statement as saying that looking forward, military intelligence analysts believe that the United States is going to be engaged in military operations that call for conventional weapons, guided missiles, drone attacks, and so forth, and that we are spending money maintaining more nuclear weapons than we actually need to remain secure.
Palm trees and 8
Reducing the size of the American nuclear arsenal would free up a lot of money that can be used to target more present threats. We already have enough nuclear bombs to deter North Korea and Iran even if we cut our arsenal to a tenth of its current sizeâ"the added deterrence of nuked a thousand times versus ten times is not enough to be relevant. But if we get an extra ten billion dollars a year, we can pay down our debt. We can get more UAVs to keep our soldiers out of harms' way. More armored cars to lower their risk to IEDs. The current bulk of the US nuclear arsenal is a relic of the Cold War and is not suited for the threats that currently faces our country.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Woa, woa, woa, relax guy! The US still has enough nukes to turn the whole of Iran into glass and after that they would still have enough left over to turn Argentina into a huge sinkhole; and this is without spending an extra 700 billion.
As for defense of the homeland, a few well placed bunker busters would be quite enough to calm down any saber-rattling nation. Plus, the simple fact of staying home and not meddling would also reduce animosity towards the nation.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan are where the US should cut costs though.
You know Chavez is from Venezuela, right? Not sure where the attitude against Argentina came from, but they are some ok dudes... Is your map of South America maybe upside down?
Reagan won out the cold war without firing a shot.
And he also ensured that our future would forever be saddled with debt. Which makes me laugh when I read the end of your original post:
Stop Iraq, Libya and Afghan wars. There is your savings and cost reductions. Keep our military strong here at home to DEFEND us.
Spend more on your military industrial complex than you take in on taxes. THERE is your ensured debt and eventual country-wide bankruptcy. Raise the debt ceiling? Sure why not? We've done it, how many times since Reagan?
You're in fantasy land where communists are nice people, just misunderstood. Never mind the hundred + million they've killed since the 1920's.
You're in a fantasy land where a large part of today's world population are mass murderers just because they live in a communist society! Put that blame on communist leaders and we'll talk. I rip China apart more than anybody on Slashdot, I don't need to hear you assume that I think they're misunderstood angels. Their leaders are human rights violators but I don't hold the citizens responsible for death. When you nuke a country do you think the leaders are the only ones that get hurt?
The only fear monger is you "Oh God we're all gonna die!"
What in the hell are you talking about? We're trying to have a discussion about possible ways to decrease our spending so we can catch up with the insane amount of debt we've been accumulating. And you totally skirted any indication that you even understand that whether we build a thousand more nukes or stick with our current numbers, the outcome is the same. We could hold the entire world hostage right now if we wanted to just by threatening to detonate all of our nuclear weapons on ourselves and I think it's time to consider that enough force if to increase that means $700 billion.
My work here is dung.
Why don't they sell a few of them? I'm sure they could find a buyer in Iran or North Korea, and I bet they'd pay a lot.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
well the sub force exists largely just to hunt enemy subs(which have nukes) and to deploy revenge nukes. the intelligence work etc doable with them is just related to that. the subs don't exist even for putting up a naval blockade. as far as bombers.. well, you got some nice bombers already and some strike aircraft capable of carrying quite a bit of bombs, the force is big enough even for traditional carpet bombing. but of course with the subs the question is what's wrong with the old subs? that's a national secret, right? I mean apart from the need to run a high tech shipyard industry experiment. but all that sounds like a joke considering that usa doesn't even have those xxx billion dollars.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A) You don't need to nuke the whole country. Think if Washington, New York, Houston and LA were hit with 1 nuke each. We would collapse. Same thing with any other country. You hit population, finance, political and military centers, you will fold a country.
B) Nukes today are much more powerful than what we used in Japan. Maybe not as powerful as some tested in the 50's and 60's, but far more powerful than the relatively small ones used on Japan.
Honestly, 500 nukes should be more than enough for any situation. Heck, even 100 is enough. The problem is keeping those hundred nukes safe, spread out, and operational, which is most of the cost whether you have 500 or 5000 nukes.
So, like... they mean, forever then?
Because let's face it... there's not a chance on this earth that every nuclear power going would just up and dismantle 100% of their nuclear arsenal. It wouldn't matter what we were facing... no disaster, no common threat... nothing.
I mean, I suppose if some disaster comes along and we end up getting obliterated entirely (not merely facing inevitable extinction, but actually ending up that way), there's a good chance that the threat of nuclear terrorism could be eliminated along with our species...
Until then... however... it ain't gonna happen. Of this, I am certain.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower Eisenhower was a great Republican, 5 star general, Supreme Commander, from the midwest with a lot of common sense.
The bombings of Tokyo damaged more and killed more than both nukes combined.
The two nuclear bombs ended the war, not because we vaporized two cities, but because they had no idea how many more we had.
No, the fear is someone will preempt you and knock out your arsenal before you can do anything about it. I understand a lot of you kids didn't live through the cold war. I get it. Please don't think you understand nuclear strategy based on the "War on Terror."
China and Russia have significant operational arsenals. A whole lot of nations are jealous of those arsenals and very much want to join the club. Our current force level is sufficient to deal with a counter-force strike, which makes MAD sensible. You cut our arsenal too much, you give "the other guy" a sporting chance.
If you think the only "other guy" left is some Arabs in a tent, you're out of your mind. We're all friend and all enemies in this world. The only sensible strategy is to keep us safe and scare away anyone that wants to give us a go. You can get all this for a FRACTION of what we're spending on the rest of the military.
You want to cut military spending? Good. Cut the Army. Stop bombing everyone. Stop nation building. Make it real clear we'll defend ourselves and our allies with our full remaining might. Cheap and effective.
Former presidents have warned us of such abuses of the Military Industrial Complex.
Today the M.I.C has been painting itself into a smaller and smaller corner of which they cannot get out of without getting the wet paint of their lies all over themselves... and here is why...
Population growth has a way of pressuring social change. It happened in what is described in metaphorical terms as the tower of babel, which is more and event happening around the world, each growing society in its own time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel -n Julian Jaynes explains it as the break down of the bicameral mind to that of more than just awareness but consciousness. The use of higher level abstractions, introspection, the first recorded suicides, and the wrongful use of abstraction was discovered a tool of deception.
The next event of social change was of moving from a limited mathematical symbol set of the roman numerals to the easier to use and more powerful Hindu Arabic decimal system with its zero place holder. the idea of nothing (the abstraction of zero) can have value was hard to comprehend.
Today we are at another threshold of change due to population growth and communication technology.
Of the near 7 billion people on this planet its becoming realized that its some fraction of 1% messing things up for the rest of us. Its becoming clear there are those who are psychologically unfit to command anyone. Verifiable psychopaths who pursue the increase in the military industrial complex with such tactics as invading a country base on a unverified claim and media hype and in the process killing over 100,000 civilians. Thsi done in teh name of protecting the freedoms of Americans while the same excuse is then being used by these psychopaths to strip teh very freedoms they claim to protect, away from Americans.
Now if another country came to the US and killed 100,000 American civilians, would we hate them? Of course!!
And this is how the psychopaths, like drug addicts, try to verify and validate their disease. Making enemies, not friends.
But today the mass majority of the population knows, all but these few, share in doing the same daily things called living...
Efforts like Wikileaks only helps to expose the dillusions of power these few have and how sick they really are.
Money is an abstraction. We do not need it to be productive, we only need man power, knowledge and natural resources, of which we have plenty.
Knowledge begets knowledge and waring knowledge begets more waring knowledge... and like wise, productive knowledge begets more of its own...
The waring mindset is going to destroy itself...
Actually, the US and Great Britain are both designing new ballistic submarines, with the US's existing fleet being a 35yr old design and the newest 15yrs old. The French started building their new Triomphant class in the late 90's, with their latest entering service just last year. The Russians recently restarted their Borei class with two ships launched, and a third due out next year. The remaining five are postponed, not due to funding cuts, but because they want to redesign it significantly into a new class.
The US is not alone. Everyone, including Russia, is spending money on new nuclear hardware.
... so why shouldn't the chinese simply cash in their markers ...
Because they need to buy US bonds in order to drive the relative value of their currency down in order to maintain their export based economy.
It is inaccurate to think that China's current advantage is merely low cost labor. For simplistic goods, say beaded necklaces for Mardi Gras, that are priced as commodities low labor costs do help. However for the more technical and advanced goods, say an iPhone, labor represents a smaller component of the overall costs. I think GE recently announced expanding production of jet engines in the US, IIRC labor was only 15-20% of the cost of the engine so outsourcing for low labor wasn't helpful. What gives China an advantage in higher end goods is not labor costs, rather it is a currency that is artificially devalued. So what can they do with all those US dollars exporters are collecting? The exporters can't return those dollars to the various world markets, that would move the Chinese currency in the "wrong" direction. So the government buys the dollars from the exporters. What is the government to do with the dollars, like the exporters they can not return them to a world market. However they can buy US treasury notes, that will not cause their currency to rise in relative value. So as long as China has an export based economy driven by an artificially low currency they can not get rid of those notes.
Congress critter discussion:
--sarcasm mode on--
Of course we need all of those things in the budget for the next X number of years. It's either that or lay off the trained force that builds the darn things and scale back the number of defense spending related jobs in my home state. And those people vote, darn it, and they by golly are not going to vote for me if I cost them their jobs by doing the RIGHT THING!!
* Rubber Stamp *
---sarcasm mode off---
Any questions about why we need these weapons now?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land? "
Maybe ironic humor is our last, best hope against the war machines?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The warheads are cheap. The expensive parts of them are made that is the fission material. The other part that has to be replaced is the Tritium and that has to be replaced as it decays.
It is the delivery systems. The Ohio class subs are getting old as are the Trident missiles. The D5 is at least 20 years old and the Subs that carry them are getting close to 30 years old. It costs a good percentage of the cost of a new sub to refuel and update an old one. Also you have to keep making new subs so you can make new subs. You have to keep the knowledge alive because it would take a long to recreate it if you need it.
It isn't the number of warheads that is the cost driver but the cost of the delivery systems. The Minuteman III is at least 40 years old. It was supposed to be replaced by MX but that was retired early because of START. It was too big to keep. Bombers do tend to be good investments for the US. The B-52 sure was. The B-1 and B-2 are also being used today. Even if you cut the warheads in half you would still have about the same costs to build the workable deterrent. You can argue that we don't need any or not but with Russia building new Missiles, subs, and possible bombers and China building new Subs and missiles I can not honestly say that we are ready to beat our swords into plowshares.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
But what happens when you have a glut of pyramids that you built by soaking up excess labour? The nice thing about war toys is you get to blow them all up, and everybody cheers. Well, maybe not everybody.
If, instead, we used the weapons to attack the military industry itself, then we don't have to employ those people. That is a win-win.
Well, for subs you want to build at least 3. That way you can always have 1 out to sea. Anything less and you will have times when all of your subs are in dock. Just look at the aguish the British are having with their subs. And that assumes the only thing the sub is being a nuclear deterrent and that no backup is needed.
If you are planning to do anything else with your sub [Recon, special unit warfare, launching cruise missiles close the enemy cost, etc.] you had better hope that you are operating in a single theater a time.
Planes are kind of the same thing. If they have a single task [such as a B1-B] you can get away with fewer. If they can do multiple things then you are going to want more.
Lastly, if you build 12 subs, the 12th sub is going to be about ½ the cost of the first. The first subs are going to be more expensive until the workers figure out the best way to put things together better. And I am not talking about spreading R&D costs over multiple units [which is also true]. We are talking about assembling a highly complex machine. Planes tend to be the same.
Yeah, they did a real bang up job last time...
And the time before that...
And the time before that...
I can't imagine why anyone would think they are a terrible option. The Democrats obviously suck at everything other than waffling, shuffling their feet, and getting in their own way, so why not vote for a party that routinely blows everything up instead? It may be worse, but at least it isn't boring.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
The phrase used was not "nuclear submarines." It was "nuclear-armed" submarines. That's pretty umambiguous.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
So as you note, testing is done with computers these days. The DoE has bigass supercomputers and keeps building new ones, a major reason is to accurately simulate (down to the atomic level) our nuclear weapons. Ok, well turns out those badass supercomputers are good at other kinds of simulations too, and get used for them. They aren't worthless, military only, things.
All I'm saying is consider all angles. Part of that "savings" would be cutting the US's highest end supercomptuer program. Now of course you wouldn't have to cut it, you could keep that and use them just for other kinds of research, but then your savings are less because you still spend the billions on them.
Always you need to look at the full impact of this. It is easy to look at something and say "If we cut it we save that much!" However consider what all you are cutting. You may find there is stuff in there you'd want to keep, and then your savings aren't quite what you claimed.
No, it's not. IN fact, that' not even in doubt.
The details is the problem. Grover Norquist created the current meme that honoring the expiration of the Bush tax cuts = Raising taxes. His lies to the media is the problem. I think the man is a psychopath and will happily watch society burn as long as it doesn't involve 'raising taxes'.
The other problem is the idea thet the government ahs more money then it need to give peope the services it needs, and that it will 'find money' somewhere.
People are incredibly ignorants about taxs, the government, and the realities of society. The republicans are using the ignorance to generate fear and hate. So anything anyone says otherwise is 'part of the problem'.
Think about this:
Right now we are in a country that when republicans come up with something, and Obama likes it and says he will sign it, the republicans sponsoring the bill back out.
Right now its ALL ABOUT making Obama look bad at ANY expense. They are stopping the common government functions.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How about we just say no....that way we save 700 billion dollars over 10 years, and force not only the recycling of our weapons, but also maybe come back from our economic crisis and recover a bit of dignity as a nation being strict on development of nuclear arms...practice what we preach, right?
Obama, if your listening, get a clue, tell them hell no!!!
Wow, you have a severe and fundamental lack of understanding of history.
The Cold War wasn't about nukes. The Cold War was KEPT COLD by nukes. That is the one and only thing that stopped tanks from rolling on both sides. Russia wouldn't have cared one whit about our defensive nuclear arsenal if we didn't have thousands upon thousands of tanks on their borders. Sort of like how nobody really cares how many nukes the French have. You quite clearly know their purpose--they are there to keep foreign invasion at bay.
Everybody always screams about nuclear war, but it never happened. Nukes were used in one war, and that was enough. I don't know if you people have noticed, but the rate of change of maps worldwide has been slowing down an awful lot since the introduction of nukes. Pretty much the only changes we see now are either reunions or balkanizations.
Look at the geography of the U.S., other than an air invasion a force would have to land at the coasts, Canada, or Mexico, two of those would be acceptable losses and for the third there's a secret strategic reserve of hockey players.
I'm living in Titska Watitch Territory, and lived here most of my life. Almost all of the Europeans have left Europe for a reason. They came for the land and an improved quality of life. It doesn't give them the right to come illegally.
This is not for raising how much MORE we want to spend on future programs. This is for covering what is already scheduled to be spent under programs currently in operation.
Not raising this limit will mean a technical default or failure to meet our obligations as a debtor. Like not paying your credit card bill. You already spent the money, but you just refused to pay for it. This is exactly why the credit rating agencies have considered lowering our nations credit score... Failure to pay...
By trying to "fix our balance sheet" by blocking payment on our CURRENT obligations instead of when we make a new budget... yes it is easy to see the republicans as trying to make Obama look bad. The proper time for trimming fat is when you are making a new budget. Not when it comes time to pay your bills.