Spending Priorities

Watching the dontard at the G7 gives some clear signs that American leadership in most spheres is on the decline.

Unfortunately, instead of using this to help the country by reducing the amount we spend on defending other countries he is trying to increase defense spending because it is popular with some of his supporters.

I'm not advocating for a weak defense, just a smarter one that protects our country and focuses on where we need to focus.

One of the things to understand about defense spending is that it is in many ways a type of stimulus to some companies, which gets great support in congress because it creates jobs in their districts.

We build state of the art weapons that are unlikely to be used in an actual conflict.

We have military all over the globe including Korea, the middle east, Europe and Africa, to contain our enemies.

This spawns a defense industry which has been raking in record profits with no end in sight.

Instead of simply spending billions on weapons we probably don't need we should evaluate the actual threats to this country and our allies and decide on an affordable plan.

I disagree with a lot of what the dontard says and does, but it is time that our allies picked up more of the cost of defending themselves instead of us.  They are able to provide all their citizens with health care while we pay for weapons and men to protect them.

We need to focus our funds where they help the citizens of this country while staying strong.

We have technology now that can provide protection while reducing the risk to our people with drones and other technology.

We have to get smart about where the money we borrow gets spent.

Spending Roulette

The deadline for a spending extension or actual budget bill is midnight tonight and while the Senate seems to have got an agreement, the House hasn't.

Now its quite likely that it will accept the Senate deal, almost certainly if it goes to a floor vote where the fiscal conservatives can vote against it but it will still pass with the votes of the democrats.

It effectively ends sequestration in the manner sequestration intended, by passing a budget.

Sequestration was intended to be so harsh that it would force the congress to make a deal.

It failed for quite a while.

The spending increases in this deal may seem like a lot, but remember they have been postponed for a number of years now.

Of course we still need to address serious issues like immigration and dreamers, the deficit, the environment, entitlement programs, but it is at least a start.

With the mid-term elections now on everyone's mind and of course primary challenges to worry about we are probably in a period where little will actually happen.

But lets put down the spending revolver for now at least and try to get to work.

Tax Reform

There are issues with the US Tax Code, one of which is that it is overly complex.

Now Over the years special interest groups have managed to get exemptions for a lot of special interests built in but some of these have become ingrained and popular.

Its also problematic that we make individuals file tax returns on their income and deductions which inevitably is going to lead to some of the issues we have, such as wealthy individuals able to dodge their "fair" share of taxes and others not taking advantage of things they could.

Clearly it also fails us since it doesn't provide enough funds to pay our bills.

It may be that our bills are too high, but it may just be that we aren't collecting enough.

One thing that can't be ignored in this debate is that we already spend a tremendous amount on our military and much of the military spending is simply shot or blown up with no lasting benefit.

Of course we have to have a strong enough military to protect this nation, but we are one of the few countries in the world in a relatively safe location.  

Assuming Canada and Mexico don't become excessively warlike we are extremely difficult to attack with conventional forces and most of our resources are devoted to force projection in foreign lands.

This is expensive and history shows us that many nations have declined trying to maintain strong military that they had to borrow to support.

Somehow the debate in this country is that we borrow to pay for other things like benefits and entitlements while we don't attribute that borrowing to military spending.

Well what we spend on defense generally is more than the deficit and in 2017 its more than twice the deficit.  Now clearly we aren't going to make drastic reductions to defense, but the last surplus we experience coincided with the peace dividend under President Clinton.

So what is actually needed in tax reform?  Maybe we really do need to reduce our spending to what we collect or increase our collections to what we spend.  It would also be good to simplify our tax codes and I would be in favor of a system that was consumption based instead of income based, it would be easier to enforce and collect.

What is most likely though is some tinkering, some added complexity, some arguments over sacred cows and not much done to address the issue of balancing the budget.

Probably not much better than what we already have.