NOVANEWS
by Ed Mattson
Congress is at it again. No doubt the degree of urgency is greater this time around because of the unsustainable federal debt, but it is something we as veterans, military, and freedom-loving Americans, had better understand.
In November, 2010, former Senator, Alan Simpson (R), co-chairman of the Obama Debt Commission, and respected Democrat (from the Clinton era), Erskine Bowles, presented the committee’s budget assessment and a checklist of suggested cuts that would trim $4 trillion dollars from the US Budget deficit over the next decade. Failure to do so, was the warning, there would be a collapse of the US dollar and the entire economy as we would be forced to default on our country’s financial obligations.
This is not “rocket science”, as every person in America should know. As individual citizens we are forced to live within our own personal budgets, or we end-up bankrupt. It is hard to imagine the government not understanding this simple fact of life. As a country we are facing more than $14 trillion in debt, with another $61.6 trillion in unfunded future mandates. This is insane.
It boils down to the fact that every man, women and child, carries a debt burden of more than a half million dollars (estimated at $534,000)
“In 2015, the estimated interest due – $533 billion – is expected to be a third of the federal income taxes paid that year”, said Charles Konigsberg, chief budget counsel of the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group. Interest payments alone on the federal debt are expected to be $4.8 trillion over the next ten years. This is totally unsustainable.
Why is this important to the military and veterans? We are right in the cross-hairs of the Debt Commission budget-cut recommendations. Being the fiscal conservative that I am, I can understand the need to bring the US financial house under control. There is no doubt the entire budget is unsustainable, but we’ve been down this road before and sometimes politicians, looking at their re-election agenda, are not the brightest bulbs in the lamp when it comes to budget cutting. As a matter of fact, you can’t even find those words in what I call in thecongressional dictionary, however, the Simpson Committee did a very credible job in laying out what needs to be done.
The military, has three on-going war-time engagements (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya), and more than 175,000 troops stationed in about 150 countries around the world, many of whom are still in locations that were necessary during the cold war. The US spends an estimated 43% of the world’s military expenditures.
Why do we need more than 50,000 troops Germany, 10,000 in the UK, nearly 10,000 in Italy, 32,000 in Japan, and 28,000 in South Korea? Surely this would be an attractive target for some cutbacks. Shouldn’t these countries be responsible for their own security?