Pangloss

Indeed there are quite a lot of problems with military spending. The audit discussion held earlier on this board makes it sound like there's no oversight at all, which is not the case -- there's quite a lot of oversight. But there's only so much they can do and congress has an agenda of its own (and reducing spending isn't really on it). What is clear is that cutting the budget alone won't solve the problem. As Phi suggests, we need some real, intelligent process overhaul. I don't know about the merge suggestion -- it's interesting, but I don't think we really have the knowledge level here to state whether that would be a positive step. More information is needed.

Bleh, they're pretty close in color. I'm not exactly on my game today, and as usual you're having a hard time finding common ground with me. Whatever. As I said above I agree with cutting defense spending, and as you say that would reduce the deficit if you could cut it by that much. Don't expect a cut of more than 200 billion or so from defense, and even that is an extreme outside chance at best. Even at that level you'd have to lay off tens of thousands of military personnel at a time when job losses are already a serious issue. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, I'm saying it's not going to be easy or popular.

Apf, now you expect people to lie just to see their loved ones in the hospital. Geez.

I misread, but the GAO just came forward a couple of weeks ago saying that the deficit would top a trillion even before considering the full ramifications of the bailout packages. But fine, let's ignore all non-budgetary spending and deficits, and focus entirely for the moment on what is in the budget. Here's the 2009 budget, which is already in effect. Under this budget the Department of Defense, which got about 515 billion, is only 13.34% of the total budget. Yes, that's more than the deficit, but you're not going to be able to cut $404 billion from defense spending. Salaries alone are something like 40 or 50 billion, and you have all that equipment to run and training to do. Even if you cut defense spending in HALF, which would be *radical change*, you've only cut 250 billion or so. And we know the deficit is going to be a lot more than that, because of Iraq and Afghanistan, which Obama has NOT pledged to leave right away. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget

No, they'd be denied visitation rights because they're not a member of the family.

Are you sure about that? I thought there was a spike in income tax revenues due to the dot-com bubble.

Bascule you just got through pointing out to me that that deficit figure was incorrect. You can't have it both ways -- is it $482 billion, or over a trillion?

They CAN do whatever they want. What I think they SHOULD do is join Obama in the spirit of reconciliation and a new spirit of national unity. Joe Lieberman is not their enemy, and he has not harmed them in any way. Furthermore, what we're talking about is internal politics of the Democratic Party, not the running of this country. But it's the running of this country that will be affected by their internal political action. I think that's wrong too. That is how it is normally done, but remember -- we want CHANGE. That's not change. It's anti-change. (I'm coining a new phrase here today.)

You're right about the farm bill being spread out over five years -- I apologize for that. But the point I was trying to make was that dropping $250 from next year's budget is going to make a very small ripple is a very large pond. I support the idea of cutting defense spending, and I will support a lot of specifics in that department. But what I'm afraid of is that Democrats will cut defense spending a bit and call it a day. That just isn't going to cut it. Even if you cut every single dime we spend on the military you STILL won't have a balanced budget.

The vast majority of that trillion dollar deficit coming under a Democratically-controlled Congress, btw. You really should stop blaming everything on Republicans. It isn't logical, and it isn't working. And it isn't what Obama is doing.

From Obama's web site: http://change.gov/americaserves/ Now THAT strikes me as socialism. Bear in mind that as stated this would affect all students, however they are paying for their educations. It's possible something was just misworded here and it is actually intended to apply only to students receiving financial aid (this would be more consistent with statements made on the campaign trail). What do you all think?

Cutting military spending is almost to the point of trivial now. This country spent over five trillion dollars this year (on receipts of 2.7 trillion!). The budget of the Department of Defense was something like $550 billion, not counting Iraq and Afghanistan, which will decrease next year but will not be eliminated (even if Obama changed his tune and removed us immediately, the budget he'll be operating under next year came from Bush's office). So even if you slashed the Pentagon's budget in half you'd still be freeing up less money than the 2007 FARM BILL. (Now there's a political fight I'd like to see -- with ONE STROKE of a pen you could free up $300 billion in subsidies currently being given to already-profitable mega-corporations. But there is probably not one person in congress who would support such a measure. Well okay, maybe one.) I do agree that we need to work on the defense budget, but we have bigger fish to fry. Much bigger. ---- BTW, just for fun, let me repost this, since it seems appropriate to the thread. Who wants to be a richer man anyway?

Thanks!

Interestingly enough, the government has already implemented a system of online identification for a critical federal program -- financial aid. It's called FAFSA, or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Unfortunately it's a bit awful -- impossible for even many intelligent people to fathom, and not really very secure.

I don't think we have Missouri yet, do we?

Fair enough.

Correct. And while I think it's unfortunate that he's doing this, I have to qualify my remarks by saying that this IS how the business of the Senate is traditionally done. Internal party business directs Senate business, and Senate business reflects party happenings and structure. But it ain't what I voted for on Tuesday, and if this is what he plans to do with his "mandate" then he's going to have a very big surprise waiting for him in November of 2010.

In what regard?

Exactly.

That's interesting. And dimly familiar, but I can't think of what they might be referring to specifically.

Can you give us any examples?

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iDuXte5q_Mq4U0JKrcPRUJppvHVQD949MCJ81 I guess Harry Reid must have missed Obama's victory speech, in which he spoke of bringing people together and listening to one another. Today he went after Joe Lieberman in one of the most obvious examples of political pandering since the nomination of Sarah Palin as VP candidate. The technical right: To force members of your political party to play ball your way. The message: Support Republicans, and we will destroy you. This is a perfect example of how different President Obama will be from the partisan leaders of Congress. Something will have to be done about that, or there will be clashes between the two.

Did you notice how they're continuing to solicit feedback and collect contact information? It makes sense -- it worked wonders during the campaign. Why not send an SMS text message directly to everyone in the country when he has a new initiative and needs elected lawmakers to support it? He could be the most in-touch president in history. It's odd that I just assumed that would end after he got elected.

It's not just liberals, it's all young people. They don't watch TV anymore either; they play video games and mess around on the Internet.