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Throwing More Money at the Military Is a Waste

The military doesn't need a larger budget, so Trump will be piling more debt on future generations for no good reason.
pentagon

Trump campaigned on increased military spending, and this week he will announce a plan to do just that. This line from the report made me laugh:

Given that Mr. Trump plans to boost military spending and cut taxes, the White House budget plan could leave conservatives in a difficult position if the GOP-led budget does little to curb spending.

There are some genuine fiscal conservatives that wouldn’t want to do what Trump is proposing, but there are usually not many of them when a Republican president is in office. Under Bush, there wasn’t even the pretense that Republicans cared about adding an enormous amount to the debt. Most Congressional Republicans supported financing Bush’s wars and expansion of Medicare with borrowing, and I assume the same will be true again now. The administration won’t be able to make up the difference from higher military spending and reduced revenue by gutting other agencies, but I doubt that will stop them from trying. Needless to say, the military doesn’t need a larger budget, so Trump will be piling more debt on future generations for no good reason. The U.S. spends as much on our military as the next seven countries combined, and it could afford to spend significantly less than it does if it practiced restraint, but we already know that Trump has no interest in that. Increasing military spending beyond its already exorbitant current level is inherently wasteful, and doing it in the way that Trump plans is completely fiscally irresponsible.

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