The Real Reason For Our Deficit

The Republicans are whining again about our deficit and growing national debt, and they are right -- we are spending too much money on some things. But they want us to think that we are spending too much on education and social programs and health care -- the things that go to helping our own people have a decent standard of living and build a better future for themselves. I disagree. Those are the things we should be spending government money (taxpayer money) on.

The chart above shows an area, a big area, where we are spending way too much money. It is military spending. The chart shows the spending, both in actual dollars and as a part of GDP, of the 15 countries with the largest military budgets. The pink bar on the left represents the military spending of the United States. The multi-colored bar on the right represents the spending of the other 14 countries combined. Note that all of the other 14 countries combined still doesn't equal the military spending of the United States.

And it's actually even worse than that. The United States spends nearly half of all the money spent on the military in the entire world each year. Is this really necessary? Of course not. And don't get the idea that most of this money is being spent on our soldiers and their families. It's not. It's being spent to enrich fat cat defense contractors who are building weapon systems we can't afford, don't need, and most of which probably won't work anyway.

The truth is that we could reduce our military spending by 75%, and we'd still be spending more on our military than any other country in the world. There is currently a 10% cut in the military (spread out over the next 10 years) that will happen starting next year if no action is taken to stop it. Republicans are screaming that the extremely modest cut would damage our ability to defend this country (and they propose raising military spending). That's just campaign talk, and it's ludicrous. The 10% cut should be allowed to happen. In fact, a much, much bigger cut in military spending should be done.

No other country needs to spend this much to defend itself. And if we'd stop trying to be the world's biggest bully, we wouldn't need to spend nearly as much either.

NOTE -- While the Republicans want to spend even more money on the military, they recently blocked a bill to help veterans find good jobs. How stupid is that?