Again, I see no reference to show an $800B defense spending cut - and the way you wrote it, that $800B has already been cut. Please show me your proof - I want to see a solid reference. And when it comes to defense, our Navy is ALREADY more powerful than the rest of the world's navies combined, so I don't see how it makes any sense to keep it at the same level of spending, much less give it any increase in funding.
Defense Budget is Being Cut: By Any Way You Look at It
■Defense spending, on the other hand, under the Obama Administration will remain at historic lows, especially when compared to other times of war, yet this is where Democrats continue to cut.
■Defense spending will decline every year as a percentage of GDP. At the same time, spending across the federal government is projected to be higher than its 40-year average.
■Defense spending was 4.2 percent of GDP in 2012, down from 4.5 percent in 2011.
■As a historical comparison, using OMB tables, defense spending was 37.5 percent of GDP in 1945 (WWII), in 1953 (Korea) it was 14.2 percent, and at the peak of Vietnam (1968) it was 9.4 percent.
■OMB projects defense spending will be 3.5 percent of GDP in 2014; 3.1 percent in 2015; 3.0 percent in 2016; and 2.9 percent in 2017.
■As the CBO director testified in October 2011, defense spending is “well below the average for defense spending since World War II.”
Defense spending should naturally be subject to the same scrutiny as all other federal programs. Any claim that defense spending is recklessly out of control, however, and that cutting it will solve our fiscal crisis, simply does not hold up to the facts.
Obama Sequester Exacerbates Obama Defense Cuts | Policy Paper | Senate Republican Policy Committee
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Pentagon's Carter: Choices Made Under Sequestration Are 'Dumb' | USNI News >
>" The money is there to pay for forward-deployed ships and aircraft, he said, but that has meant cutting back on people and ships ready to surge forward when world events require naval action.
"People say, 'Well, I don't understand this impact of sequestration. I don't see anything,' " Greenert said. The spending cuts are in areas away from deployment, he said.
The Navy has two aircraft carrier groups deployed - one in the Pacific and a second in the Persian Gulf region - and two amphibious assault ship groups deployed in each of the regions. But it has only one other carrier group and amphibious group with enough training time to be in ready reserve, Greenert said, and it needs three of each type of group prepared to surge.
"That's the part that concerns me," he said, noting, for example, that Virginia Beach residents aren't hearing as much jet noise from Oceana these days. "We don't have enough of our airplanes operating," he said..."<
>" Personnel expenses account for half of all defense spending, he said. "If we keep growing at the rate we're growing on entitlements - and this includes health care and a whole host of things that we have to put in - that's going to get up to 70 or 80 percent of our budget when you get up into 2022-23," he said. "That's extraordinary." "<
Admiral: Brace for similar sequester impact in 2014 | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com