Posted on 05/24/2010 10:02:37 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
Congress, with its insatiable appetite for spending, is set to pass yet another “supplemental” appropriations bill in the next two weeks. So-called supplemental bills allow Congress to spend beyond even the 13 annual appropriations bills that fund the federal government. These are akin to a family that consistently outspends its budget, and therefore needs to use a credit card to make it through the end of the month.
If the American people want Congress to spend less, putting an end to supplemental appropriations bills would be a start. The 13 “regular” appropriations bills fund every branch, department, agency, and program of the federal government. Congress should place every dollar in plain view among those 13 bills. Instead, supplemental spending bills serve as a sneaky way for Congress to spend extra money that was not projected in budget forecasts. Once rare, they have become commonplace vehicles for deficit spending.
The latest supplemental bill is touted as an “emergency” war spending bill, needed to fund our ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. The emergencies never seem to end, however, and Congress passes one military supplemental bill after another as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on.
Many of my colleagues argue that Congress cannot put a price on our sacred national security, and I agree that the strong, unequivocal defense of our country is a top priority. There comes a time, however, when we must take stock of what our blank checks to the military industrial complex accomplish for us, and where the true threats to American citizens lie.
The smokescreen debate over earmarks demonstrates how we have lost perspective when it comes to military spending. Earmarks constitute about $11 billion of the latest budget. This sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the $708 billion spent by the Pentagon this year to expand our worldwide military presence. The total expenditures to maintain our world empire is approximately $1 trillion annually, which is roughly what the entire federal budget was in 1990!
We spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined, and far more than we spent during the Cold War. These expenditures in many cases foment resentment that does not make us safer, but instead makes us a target. We referee and arm conflicts the world over, and have troops in some 140 countries with over 700 military bases.
With this enormous amount of money and energy spent on efforts that have nothing to do with the security of the United States, when the time comes to defend American soil, we will be too involved in other adventures to do so.
There is nothing conservative about spending money we don’t have simply because that spending is for defense. No enemy can harm us in the way we are harming ourselves, namely bankrupting the nation and destroying our own currency. The former Soviet Union did not implode because it was attacked; it imploded because it was broke. We cannot improve our economy if we refuse to examine all major outlays, including so-called defense spending.
Well, IMHO Paul is a fruitcake.
Logical? I guess there is no chance that we are only simply looking out for own interests abroad and working with our allies towards a common goal of freedom and prosperity worldwide? The use of the word ‘empire’ by the likes of Paulites or the Code Pink crowd is the usual propaganda against America interests.
If by "our own interests", you mean the interests of the America and the American people, we haven't been looking out for those interests in a very long time -- and that's the point.
Quite sipping on the necon "Save the world" koolaid, and you'd see that.
At least I am not drinking the Code Pink kool-aid that you are. It is giving you hallucinations about neo-con empires and that in no way serves the interests of true Americans or freedom loving people anywhere.
Typical arrogant propagandist BS, "If you don't agree with me, then you are a flake". Most freepers aren't stupid enough to buy into that.
The USA is a Republic, NOT a Democracy -- then why are we running around "Making the world safe for Democracy"? Why aren't we spanning the globe, "Making the world safe for Republicanism"? This is especially important in ethnically based countries (all but a handful in the world). Because in those countries, "Making the world safe for Democracy" means "those ethnic groups with the most babies win" independent of whether or not they can afford those babies.
We aren't spreading "our way of life". We are spreading an alien way of life that is making inroads into the USA and overturning our way of life.
Wake up and smell the coffee!
Well I guess you are stupid enough to cast an insult of “Typical arrogant propagandist BS” and then whine and complain when it gets cast right back at you. What a hypocrite.
And considering that we are a representative republic then as citizens of such we should use our power to correct instances of a bad foreign policy to instead promote our true interests abroad... not spouting the type of propaganda that blames America with a broad brush and also accuses us of being an empire such as you, Code Pink and the Paul crowd buy into.
It is you who need to wake up and stop spouting typical anti-America style propaganda with such arrogance.
"It is you who need to wake up and stop spouting typical anti-America style propaganda with such arrogance."
Yes, I can see how you would regard my statements to be "anti-American"./s
Yea your comments calling America an empire were really pro-American...NOT. Get real.
Me: "If we are paying for an Empire and don't have an Empire, whose Empire have we been paying for? "
You: "Yea your comments calling America an empire were really pro-American...NOT. Get real."
Liar.
So you were just specualting that America is an empire and then you also went on to say that we were spreading alien values, etc....
But of course it is not you who is the liar. You just insinuate bad things about America.
You are pathetic!
If "We the People" America really was "an empire", gasoline would be $1 a gallon, because US-occupied Iraqi oilfields would be pumping just for us.
If "We the People" America really was "an empire", we'd never go to war unless we personally could profit from it, and our US citizenship would guarantee shares of those spoils of war.
"We the People" America is clearly NOT "an empire", because not one of those things are true. All that "We the People" America has ever gotten for any of our military actions is the bill.
It is not "Un-American" to ask who did profit from all of this -- as a matter of fact, it is our duty as citizens to question what our leaders are doing with our country.
Why do you continually feel the need to interject yourself into intellectual debates, TheBigIf, expecting to win the argument with nothing more than name-calling, testosterone (that you probably don't have in real life) and slander?
Right and all you did ask was who was profiting from the bill of an American empire that we are not seeing the benefits of. In other words you insinuated that America was an empire but that it did not benefit the people and it was only logical that we should ask who the American empire was benefitting.
I simply presented another possibility to you that we are acting in the nation’s interests abroad and then it was you who started with “name-calling, testosterone (that you probably don’t have in real life) and slander?”
You obviously can not even follow your own train of thought. You also continually act as a hypocrite who does the exact things that you huff and puff about when it is re-directed back at you.
As I said before you are pathetic.
“So the next logical question is: If we are paying for an Empire and don’t have an Empire, whose Empire have we been paying for? “
Here are your own words idiot. You imply that America is an empire.
Me:"So the next logical question is: If we are paying for an Empire and don't have an Empire, whose Empire have we been paying for? "
Now you can't even bother to read. KMA TheBigIf.
Are you so much an idiot that your posting your own words insinuating that American foreign policy is that of an empire and then still believing that you didn’t say that??? You even said the only ‘logical’ question was whose empire it is that we are supporting with our tax dollars. I simply responded to your post with another possibility that was not so anti-American as the one you were espousing and of course now you are defensive.
You are a boorish obnoxious twit, a total waste of time & energy. Buzz off.
If you want to rail against Rand Paul and libertarians that’s your choice.
For me, mainstream Republicanism has had a long chance to do its work, and we’ve seen how well its done it, but if you want to stick with the approach of attacking libertarians because you don’t agree with everything they believe in, or you think that Progressivism is better than Libertarianism, then that’s your right as an American citizen.
I just happen to disagree.
“And why don’t you show me a quote from any of these conservatives you claim are willing to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons or your accusation against conservative republicans is bogus.”
You must have me confused with someone. I didn’t say anything about a conservative being willing to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons.
However, I will add this point to the discussion based on what you said here:
“The problem we have now is that we have radicals such as Paul teaming up with the CodePink left-wing radicals in stagnating our efforts to get something done by equating terrorist sponsoring dictatorships with our allies and even the United States itself.”
If Rand Paul is a radical, answer this question:
What is he a radical for?
I’m a radical too. A radical Capitalist. And that is a very good thing.
Maybe you should be a radical Conservative, and then we would have a lot of common goals, or maybe you would rather just “go along and get along.”
The radical aspect of Ron Paul that I am talking about is his foreign policy stances. His tendency to make statements that blame America for terrorism and his arguments for making dictatorships the moral equivalent of more representative governments. That is why I put him in the same category as Code Pink.
There are many aspects to Ron Paul that I respect and would defend. Even though I do not support him or his son I have recently defended his son in regards to the flap he is taking in regards to the civil rights act.
In all honesty I have always said that I wish the two major parties were libertarian and conservative. Even though I am not a liberarian I do respect a true libertarian. (There are many phoney ones though like the libertarian party of Kentucky which recently condemned Rand Paul)
So now the phony Constitutionalist Ron Paul has found new methods to attack our Armed Forces by using government to force his perverted morality on them. The pervert Paul not only supports the rights of terrorists and dictatorships over the rights of the American people but now has voted to put the rights of perverts over the rights of the men and woman serving in our Armed Forces.
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