The classic budge conundrum is guns or butter. Do you allocate limited resources to arms and the military or do you feed the people? The real measure of any leader, as Joe Biden famously said, is to examine their budgets. What are they willing to fund and what are they not willing to fund? George W. Bush inherited a defense budget of around $250 billion/year. His new budget raises that total to $515 billion, not counting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile he continues dismantling and eliminating programs for the poor.
Guns are winning. This is a rout. The worse news is we aren't even spending the funds wisely. After railing against pork barrel projects submitted by Congress Bush's own budget is loaded with lard. Hid DoD budget includes $104 billion for weapons and another $80 billion for R&D. That totals $184 billion when seven years ago the entire budget was $250 billion. The largest larder of pork in the federal budget is in The Pentagon these days.
I keep remembering Dwight Eisenhower's parting words warning us against the growing might of the military/industrial complex. That was 1961 folks and guess what? They're now running the country.
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