President Washington, President Lincoln, and President Eisenhower all pointed out some key factors that will lead to the demise of the United States - these issues will snowball until we collapse (all this is obviously paraphrased):

Washington: Don't get involved in foreign entanglements.

Lincoln: If the United States ever falls it will be due to interior issues, not exterior ones.

Eisenhower: Avoid the military-industrial complex.

By mucking up our domestic priorities (bread and circuses, just like Rome) while spending a ridiculous amount of money on defense mechanisms that are in the end inefficient (also like Rome, one might add) and managing to simultaneously waste money "helping" others (read, trying to help with money/supplies that are corruptly taken by the governments of the people we are trying to help or mucking things up by trying to control other countries) and ruining our reputation by trying to control other countries we are destroying ourselves.

Ok, a couple points:

#1 - I agree that building 'next generation' fighters and the like is a waste of scarce funds. *So does the military*, mostly - that is being driven by congresscritters with defense plants in their states. So, the military budget can - and probably should - be reduced from where it is.

#2 - The money that is not spent - and I'm deliberately not using the term 'saved' - isn't going to be available for your pet projects, people. We're already spending more than we bring in - just because you find out you're only overdrawn $800 on your checking account instead of $1000 doesn't mean you should go buy something shiny.

I would be happy to just reduce the deficit, instead of putting it towards "pet projects". Let's cut the military instead of Social Security(which has a surplus and makes the budget look better than it actually is).

I'm pretty sure Social Security is running at a deficit already. Predictions for it to be in serious trouble were moved up from 2017 to 2012, I believe, so if anything Social Security makes the budget look even worse than it already is.

Spent some time clicking around Wikipedia as a result of this thread, always fun. :-)

US military spending is massive in absolute terms (and pretty large in relative terms too), but I don't think it's way out of line with its GDP. More interesting than actual spending is US citizens perception of spending I think; you get the impression from outside the US that Obama was more concerned about what US voters would think of defense cutbacks than the generals were concerned about the security implications

More than anything the defense budget seems to be going up rather than down, yet somehow I'm way more familiar with all of the places it's going down (Poland missiles, fighter aircraft cuts) than the many, many places where it has increased. I'm not sure where these fears of cuts are coming from (could someone point them out? I'm sure something prompted this thread)

Social Security, even with the huge unemployment currently being experienced, is still cash-flow positive. They have not yet tapped the trust fund at all. The date when they may have to start pulling money from the trust fund has been moved up.

@Tantris - like, duh, do you really want someone who ISN'T a nuclear engineer building and maintaining your nuclear reactors? They provide E-N-E-R-G-Y (say it with me *energy*) which is the key word in the DOE's full name, Department of E-N-E-R-G-Y. So of course they provide and maintain the nuclear reactors in the Navy's fleet. That was just plain grasping at straws, man. The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) has oversite over ALL things nuclear in our country and has set the DOE's directive to be their hands on representatives for anything nuclear. There is WAY too much risk involved to let anyone other than a nuclear physicist/scientist/engineer mess with this equipment and it would be a gross misuse of public funds to have those same folks have duplicate counterparts in every agency that has some form of nuclear power plant or weapon.

@Draugnar: The DOE is responsible for all the of the nuclear stuff. That includes weapons, reactors for ships, etc. They do carry the cost for part of the military based on that statement. Your comment above that they do not carry the cost was incorrect.

@Tantris - Social Security has nothing, zero, zip, nada to do with unemployment. It has nothing, zero, zip, nada to do with welfare either. Social Security is retirment funds and are only tapped by retirees or disabled people who had already paid into the system. The reason it's date was moved up is the longer life of our retirees and the number of baby boomers reaching retirement age.

Why do you insist on relating unrelated events and organizations/funds? Seriously, take a course in government, would ya?

Agreed about the cost, but we aren't currently building new nuclear weapons. We are either maintaining or decomissioning was my point. This is not new military spending as yo made it out to be, but a necessary spending to maintain the safety of the equipment for both those who work with/around it, and for the populace at large considering the damage doen in a nuclear accident.

The amusing thing is, decomming all our nuclear weapons would cause the DOE's budget to *increase* - it isn't cheap to dispose of those things safely.

@Draugnar: Social Security gets all its money from the employed, ie, unemployment cuts down the amount of money coming into it. So, Social Security definitely does get affected by unemployment.

About the nuclear weapons, why not just put the money needed to fund the maintenance and upkeep of the nuclear weapons into the DOD, as it belongs, and have them subcontract to the DOE(if that is necessary)? That way, the amount spent on the military would be more clearly defined, but then that is the reason it isn't done, isn't it?

Yes and no, Tantris. You see SS is supposed to be put away for the employed future retirement. That is the theory. the reality is we long ago stopped doing that and the money we pay today goes to pay for the baby boomers retirement. But, if it were to be recognized as such, legally, then it would become a tax and not a required future investment and would have to be voted on. I await the day when some law firm with real deep pockets decides to sue the federal government to provide proof that their SS payments are being invested for them and not being used to pay for the current folks. when that proof isn't forthcoming (and the feds have already admitted misappropriating the funds to cover todays retirees) they would then sue under the idea that there was no vote by the elected officials and it was outside the agencies jurisdiction to turn it into a defacto tax. The only reason it hasn't happened is it would result in an immediate collapse of the SS system right now if the courts ordered them to stop misappropriating the funds. They are robbing Peter (the working stiffs) to pay Paul (the retirees) with no end in site and no plan to ever pay back the money they borrowed from Peter's investments. I think this guy named Bernie Madoff did something similar and isn't he rotting in prison for the next 100+ years?

Why not reorganize the entire government to make life easier for you Tantris? Because no one in authority cares about your desire to nitpick the budget.

@Draugnar: Actually, Social Security was never supposed to work that way. It is an insurance fund, essentially. It is not an investment. It was always designed as a generational shift. Everyone knows how it works and knew how it worked when it was first put in place. It isn't illegal, it is in the bill.

When I pay my federal taxes, there's a fairly short list of where I want my hard-earned dollars to go.

The Military
NASA
CIA, FBI, and the like
FEMA

Everything else, with very few exceptions, is a waste of money.

Did you consider that my list may be very different from yours? So, when you pay your taxes, you do not want it to go to some things. When I pay my taxes, I may not want it to go to others.

While I also have a list of things I'd rather not support with my taxes, if we all had the ability to choose whether or not the pay taxes the entire country would collapse. It didn't work well when the states had the ability to choose (Articles of Confederation), and I'm sure it would be infinitely worse to allow individuals to make that choice.

No Tantris, you're wrong. While Social Security is a sort of government insurance, it works pretty much like Draugnar said. It's going bankrupt because money is borrowed against the fund to pay for other projects and the total number of working people will decline when the Baby Boomers retire in earnest. That means less money in the system to pay for all the benefits and free checks people get. The government still is obligated to provide these services and entitlements, so it's got to borrow more or print more or even get out of the obligation somehow. It's a huge mess and just might bankrupt the Republic if nothing else does beforehand.

Are highways a waste of money, The_Master_Warrior? Are sound safety regulations. I don't want a big government either, but I also don't want to drive on dirt roads or eat a hotdog with a rat's foot in it.

@Invictus: So, we have been using the money for other things. The trust fund money, if it were there, would not run out until like 2040. You want to cut it, because we have been using the money in a tricky way? You are right that the budget owes the trust fund a ton of money, that will now start be coming due. We will have to make cuts to things, like the military, to pay those debts. Or, we could raise taxes. Or, we could default on our debts. It will be rough, when we can't pretend we are taking in more general fund money, than we actually are.

I don't know where to get the forms, but a few years back one of my uncles found something you can fill out and send in to find out how much you have contributed to SS over your lifetime.

We did this for my grandfather (my grandmother literally never had a job in her life, she raised her younger brothers then was a stay-at-home mom) and found out the amount he received in SS payments was much greater than what he'd ever contributed, though I don't remember to what degree.

Just my 2 cents, I know it's not really proof of anything because I don't know where to get any of this and frankly don't feel like googling it and searching stupid government websites right now.

@Tantris

Given the record of our government (regardless of which party is in control of what parts of the government), I'm sure we'll just borrow more money from China to cover it or if we've already borrowed that money from China they'll have to extend the loan or we'll default on it/them.

Social Security usually send out a periodic record of you r contributions to date and expected contributions along with your expected monthly benefit periodically. t assumes you'll make what you made for the last year for all your upcoming years until retirement and provides the monthly benefit based on several retirement ages (early, typical, and full). My wife and I each just got ours.

I've never gotten that. Maybe it's because I'm too young, though I have been working since I was...15/16?

http://www.ssa.gov/mystatement/index.htm

There's your place to learn about and request the statements.

I must apologize to Tantris. after doing a little research, I discovered that, because of the legality of using Social Security for other things, Congress passed a law that created Title VIII of the Tax Code (aka FICA) that turned the collection of Social Security into a legal tax. Damn politicians...

@ Invictus:

They are not a waste of money, but they are against the Tenth Amendment.