All,
So this is something I ginned up because it has been a topic of conversation here in recent days. Since I had done some research to make my point I put it all in an email to send out to those with whom I have these sorts of conversations. It is political in nature, but war is the continuation of politics by other means, yes? (Thank you Clausewitz.)
This is how stupid things get done over and over in the government. The main problem is that there is no incentive for politicians to fix problems. The "power" that politicians have is in the ability to spend money. There are a few people on the Republican side that are true ideologues like Rand Paul that truly believe in reducing the amount of money in government, but they are few and far between. All Pols get power by being able to spend money - regardless of political affiliation. You will notice that the average budget during the last 6 years of Clinton was 1.7 T (yes, as in TRILLION) and the 8 years of Bush 43 averaged 2.55 T.
Of course, the trick of it is that Pols have to make it look like they give a damn about reducing the deficit (because even dullards know you can't just spend money you don't have forever) without actually significantly reducing the money/power they have to wield. One way of doing this is taking advantage of the fact that most Americans are so ill-educated that they can't even take in the concept of TRILLIONS of anything. As a matter of fact, a trillion is a lot take in even if you are the kind of person that doesn't give a hoot in hell what Kanye and Kim's baby is named (and therefore are an intelligent person). To help take this in, let's look at the congressional attention played to the egregious amount of money the military has spent on uniforms.
So the background is that House is discussing laws that would make the military use a common camouflage combat uniform. Why is this? Because the military's 4 branches have spent $14,344,000 on their 9 uniforms - and several are admitted flops. 14 million! Wow! That's a shitload of money! I could do a lot with that much cash. Well, apparently the House members feel the same. So they have gotten together and are drafting a law that would require all services to go to a single combat uniform. There! That will show the people that they mean business! . . . . . Those of you who don't know who won the last celebrity dance-off know what is coming, yes?
Here is what the 2012 budget spent:
$3.538 trillion.
With all the zeros it looks like this:
$3,538,000,000,000
And here is what we spent on uniforms:
$14,344,000
To put this in perspective, lets remove several zeros - 6 specifically - and this is what it looks like:
$3,538,000.00 . . . for the budget
$14.34 . . .for combat uniforms
So in other words, it's like saying you made $3,538,000 in a year and you spent fourteen dollars on clothes. Don't know about you, but I think I could swing that. Oh, and by the way, did I mention that the fourteen dollars you spent on clothes was over a 10 year period? Oops, I must have forgotten to do so. Yep, the first new cammo uniform was the Marines' MARPAT rolled out in 2003 - for the bargain price of $319,000 by the way.
But 14 million dollars is a lot of money to the vast majority of Americans and it is a number they can mentally digest. That is why it makes a nice punching bag to beat up on in front of cameras. Wow! That politician really cares about the budget! He's planning on cutting 0.0004025820937412293% of the annual budget!! Oh, of course that 0.0004025820937412293% wasn't all spent in one year, was it? Well, in 2012 we did spent $160,000 on uniforms so I guess it's only 0.000004490597810833567% of that year's budget, but he still must really care.
One parting thought. The total budget for 2012 was what? $3.538 T? Guess what we spent on entitlements. . .That would be 2.053 T. In other words, 58 percent of the budget. Until politicians decide that doing what is right, even when unpopular, is what should be done, our financial problem will continue to worsen. Of course, until we elect people who don't care about losing the power that comes with money, we aren't going improve our lot. We could fix that desire to stay in power for so long if term limits were enacted for congressmen, but since it is congressmen that would need to vote on term limits, that has a snowball's chance in hell.
