If President Obama and Speaker John Boehner make a grand bargain to avoid the fiscal cliff, the elephant that brought us this debt is still going to be in the room. While entitlements and other human services take cuts (again), the Pentagon budget will likely stay at $500 billion a year. Do they notice:
Pentagon spending has doubled in the past decade?
A surplus of more than $100 billion remains in the Department of Defense budget?
The Pentagon loses or wastes more tax dollars than the departments of energy, commerce, justice, interior and state combined?
Thirty-seven cents of our income tax dollar goes to pay for current and past wars?
Obsolete systems (e.g., $60 billion for nuclear weapons) add to the waste?
We need to hold Congress accountable for adjusting the 2013 Pentagon budget fairly. Cutting $50 billion a year, or even $1 trillion over 10 years, would not be a hardship to the United States, which spends more than all other nations combined on weapons.
Please urge our senators and President Obama to find a just solution to the debt problem, starting with the source of most of the waste.
Peter E. Swords
Syracuse
via To cut national debt, start with Pentagon | Syracuse.com.