You may want to research your figures in more depth.
A quick google search turns up a rather different scenario.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Europe/hl782.cfm Other information freely available on the internet shows the cost to the USA to maintain bases in Germany is about 7 billion a year.
I was based in Germany and knew many German nationals employed by the USAF, not expensed to joint NATO funds.
Aside from the positive economic impact of any military installation to any town, or village in your case, the actual burden of costs is much more favorable to Germany than to the USA.
NATO spends money, and Germany contributes quite a bit.
No argument there.
It costs the USA much more than it costs Germany to keep those bases open.
We should, and will close most of them in the next 10 years.
It will begin to impact your economy, and ours, heavily in 2005.
Sorry about that.../sarcasm//
http://www.germany-info.org/relaunch/info/publications/infocus/bases/American_bases_in_Germany_fs.pdf Oh, my informations are correct. Sure, the US government pays more for the bases than the Germans - but the US government is not paying to the German state, only for their own costs.
Germany is, behind the US, the 2nd largest contributor to NATO. Right, no argument here.
We´re going to see how things will change. One´s for sure: the large number of troops won´t be kept in Europe. Even the Eastern European countries won´t get too many GI´s...