Tea Party activists: Bring on defense cuts

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Historically, every time we have weakened our military, we have been attacked. WWI, WWII, etc. It emboldens the enemy. Our military has been weakened from within and from without. There are those in our country who would get rid of it altogether. Then, we would be attacked and overrun, and all the freedom for which others have paid their lives for, would be gone.

I suspect it will happen. With “legalized” abortion, birth control, anti-religious government, etc., we are begging to be chastised. God chastises every son He loves. And He loves us all mightily!
 
There are cuts to be made without weakening our defense. The Department of Defense has many cuts of their own proposed but congress won’t allow them to make them.
 
I will believe this when I see it.

There are 2 impulses which guide the Tea Party: a social Darwinian approach to government spending, especially on social safety nets, and a militarist hyper-patriotism which, to Tea partiers, requires a “strong military” (meaning a military capable of injecting itelf anywhere, with overwhelming force, around the world whenever it feels like).

When these two impulses come into conflict, which one will win out? My guess is that the Tea party principals with access to Republican party bigwigs (who are joined at the hip with the Pentagon/defense contractor complex) will “explain how the world works” to the activists who want to cut defense spending.
 
Absolutely. I’m for closing every single US military base outside of our country.
 
I’m all for budget cuts.

We’ve been playing World Police for far too long, I’d like nothing more but to see all that money that lines the pockets of the Military Industrial Complex to come back to the USA; maybe actually start paying off our unbelievable debts.
 
We have developed, in our country, an entitlement class of people. They won’t fight to find jobs or become productive, but they’ll fight to the death for their unearned entitlements from the government, funded by those of us who do work.

Easy way to cut the welfare roles. Anyone on welfare, who is able-bodied, gets picked up each morning on a welfare-for-work bus. These individuals are used by the government to do manual labor usually hired out. In turn, they get paid by the welfare system. If they refuse to work, they don’t get paid. Pretty soon, you’ll see a lot of these lazy folks signing up to work at regular jobs.

As the Bible says, “If you do not work, you shall not eat.”
 
Scoobyshme said:
We have developed, in our country, an entitlement class of people. They won’t fight to find jobs or become productive, but they’ll fight to the death for their unearned entitlements from the government, funded by those of us who do work.

Easy way to cut the welfare roles. Anyone on welfare, who is able-bodied, gets picked up each morning on a welfare-for-work bus. These individuals are used by the government to do manual labor usually hired out. In turn, they get paid by the welfare system. If they refuse to work, they don’t get paid. Pretty soon, you’ll see a lot of these lazy folks signing up to work at regular jobs.

As the Bible says, “If you do not work, you shall not eat.”
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I’ve been advocating this for years.

But, just be warned, you’ve opend up a can of worms. No doubt the bleeding heart liberals will come out of the woodwork and scream “would someone think of the children?!?” Quite simply, the solution to that is to have them do the work while the children are in School and/or offer day care vouchers or day care itself (aren’t the schools coming to that anyways 😉 ), after school programs, etc.
 
Scoobyshme said:
We have developed, in our country, an entitlement class of people. They won’t fight to find jobs or become productive, but they’ll fight to the death for their unearned entitlements from the government, funded by those of us who do work.

Easy way to cut the welfare roles. Anyone on welfare, who is able-bodied, gets picked up each morning on a welfare-for-work bus. These individuals are used by the government to do manual labor usually hired out. In turn, they get paid by the welfare system. If they refuse to work, they don’t get paid. Pretty soon, you’ll see a lot of these lazy folks signing up to work at regular jobs.

As the Bible says, “If you do not work, you shall not eat.”
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This thread is about the Tea Party activists who’ve called for defense cuts.
 
gnjsdad said:
This thread is about the Tea Party activists who’ve called for defense cuts.
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Even the department of defense has stated that economic strength is one area the US is extremely vulnerable. A sediment that has been repeated by both Republicans and Democrats.
 
It was President Eisenhower who warned about the “military-industrial complex” as he was leaving office. And sure enough, the military industrial complex has kept getting bigger ever since.

Still, national defense is the one thing that a national government is supposed to do. Under JFK, defense was about 50% of the budget, now it is something like 25%.

I’m sure that there are cuts to be made. But I don’t want to leave the country vulnerable, nor am I willing to cede the Pacific rim to China.
 
JimG said:
It was President Eisenhower who warned about the “military-industrial complex” as he was leaving office. And sure enough, the military industrial complex has kept getting bigger ever since.

Still, national defense is the one thing that a national government is supposed to do. Under JFK, defense was about 50% of the budget, now it is something like 25%.

I’m sure that there are cuts to be made. But I don’t want to leave the country vulnerable, nor am I willing to cede the Pacific rim to China.
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As a percentage of the budget and the economy defense spending is about half what it was when Eisenhower left office.

When Eisenhower was president the US was building hundreds (thousands?) of tanks, bombers and several ships and subs every year. The US hasn’t built a new M1 tank in nearly 20 years, and only built 21 bombers in the last 25 years and ship production is extremely small. The military industrial complex doesn’t exist anymore in the way Eisenhower spoke of it. The industrial complex (except for ship building) is more like a cottage industry.
 
SamH said:
The military industrial complex doesn’t exist anymore in the way Eisenhower spoke of it.
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It’s even worse than when Eisenhower spoke of it. The Washington beltway is studded with companies/lobbying firms whose only client is the Pentagon; who are the proud recipients of no-competitive bid contracts; and whose officers participate in the revolving-door defense contractor setup. Pentagon officers or civilians put in their time, then go to one of these defense contractors, who benefit from the expertise of the former Pentagon official and learn the Washington ropes to get and maintain their exclusive Pentagon contracts.
 
gnjsdad said:
It’s even worse than when Eisenhower spoke of it. The Washington beltway is studded with companies/lobbying firms whose only client is the Pentagon; who are the proud recipients of no-competitive bid contracts; and whose officers participate in the revolving-door defense contractor setup. Pentagon officers or civilians put in their time, then go to one of these defense contractors, who benefit from the expertise of the former Pentagon official and learn the Washington ropes to get and maintain their exclusive Pentagon contracts.
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How do you think it worked when Eisenhower was President, or Truman, or Roosevelt?
 
I’ll chime in. Is anybody in the world seriously fielding a fighte airplane better than the F-15? I’m not talking about design or concepts, but manufacturing. It’s still the best, nobody can touch it, but we “need” to replace it with F-22 as something like 5 times the cost each?

Is anybody remotely close to matching a Nimitz Class carrier? No. So why have we stopped building them and begun building carriers that cost 3x as much?

Who’s got submarines as good as the last batch of Los Angeles SSNs? Nobody. But we spent billions on the Seawolf boondoggle, then scrapped that design for the Virginias that still cost lots more than the LAs. Why?

The Navy is going in for billions on the LCS ships that have no real offensive or defensive capability besides Vietnam era euipment and so-far mythical future ‘plug-n-play’ weapons pods.

We still are acting like we need to sustain the ability to mount a major war FROM anywhere on earth TO anywhere on earth in our global basing arrangements. We’re 300 million people, folks. Time to recognize that we can’t afford to indefinately holds guns on the other 4 billion people on the planet. Easier said than done, but if we don’t do it willingly soon, we’ll have to do it unwillingly after China forecloses on our nation.
 
Scoobyshme said:
We have developed, in our country, an entitlement class of people. They won’t fight to find jobs or become productive, but they’ll fight to the death for their unearned entitlements from the government, funded by those of us who do work.

Easy way to cut the welfare roles. Anyone on welfare, who is able-bodied, gets picked up each morning on a welfare-for-work bus. These individuals are used by the government to do manual labor usually hired out. In turn, they get paid by the welfare system. If they refuse to work, they don’t get paid. Pretty soon, you’ll see a lot of these lazy folks signing up to work at regular jobs.

As the Bible says, “If you do not work, you shall not eat.”
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The main problem is that there are no jobs in this country to be had. We have over 14 million jobless; there aren’t 14 million available jobs out there. And it’ll probably get worse short term given the current state of the economy.

If we were to force those on welfare to show up every morning to do manual labor for the government, then they would have the excuse of not being able to look for work since they have to “work” for the government full time. The of course you have the issue of those who work for the government getting hurt on the job; who pays their disability? the State? The Federal Government? The local municipality? Furthermore you’d have to buy the tools for them to do the work needed; provide restroom facilaties, potable water, transportation to the work site(s), supervisors to supervise them during the hours of work, etc, if they are working outdoors

Those who refuse to work under your scenario wouldn’t get paid. In an effort to survive, many of them would migrate to criminal activities; most would get caught and incarcerated. This adds additional costs to society because you’ll have to feed, clothe them, house them, provide them with some form of rudimentary medical/dental care, pay additional staff to supervise them and in extreme cases construct additional correctional facilaties, the cost of which will fall on the shoulders of taxpayers already overburdened by high taxes. Think of the costs associated with incarcerating 4-5 million more people in this country. This doesn’t include prosecuting them and appeals, etc.

I just don’t think its a workable solution.
 
gamewell45 said:
The main problem is that there are no jobs in this country to be had. We have over 14 million jobless; there aren’t 14 million available jobs out there. And it’ll probably get worse short term given the current state of the economy.

If we were to force those on welfare to show up every morning to do manual labor for the government, then they would have the excuse of not being able to look for work since they have to “work” for the government full time. The of course you have the issue of those who work for the government getting hurt on the job; who pays their disability? the State? The Federal Government? The local municipality? Furthermore you’d have to buy the tools for them to do the work needed; provide restroom facilaties, potable water, transportation to the work site(s), supervisors to supervise them during the hours of work, etc, if they are working outdoors

Those who refuse to work under your scenario wouldn’t get paid. In an effort to survive, many of them would migrate to criminal activities; most would get caught and incarcerated. This adds additional costs to society because you’ll have to feed, clothe them, house them, provide them with some form of rudimentary medical/dental care, pay additional staff to supervise them and in extreme cases construct additional correctional facilaties, the cost of which will fall on the shoulders of taxpayers already overburdened by high taxes. Think of the costs associated with incarcerating 4-5 million more people in this country. This doesn’t include prosecuting them and appeals, etc.

I just don’t think its a workable solution.
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:rolleyes:
 
gamewell45 said:
Those who** refuse **to work under your scenario wouldn’t get paid. In an effort to survive, many of them would migrate to criminal activities; most would get caught and incarcerated.
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Actually that isn’t the case. During the Depression crime dropped to an all time low. Honest people are honest, criminal people are criminals. As you stated they can refuse and choose to become criminals - but usually that decision was made long before.
 
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