If the solution is to eliminate or reduce Medicare spending, social security benefits, and infrastructure spending, just how long do you think the empire can be sustained before it's own citizens begin to reject it? Think Greece.
This is why I don't think you really know the budget very well. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are massive. Combined, they dwarf the military, but the biggest problem is that they are growing ridiculously fast (especially Medicare and Medicaid - for obvious reasons). There's nothing we could realistically do with the military to even make a meaningful dent in those programs' solvency and cost problems. Even if we eliminated national defense altogether (which even Putin wouldn't favor, because he would lose his boogeyman), it would only delay the inevitable. For the long term, there's no getting around entitlement reform.
Let me clarify my comment because your interpretation of what I said isn't what I meant to convey. I'm fully aware that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security not only comprise a larger portion of the budget than defense, but they are also growing at a faster rate because of demographics in the case of Social Security, and a combination of demographics, fraud, and defacto cartels in the case of the Medicare, Medicaid and healthcare in general. As you and Monahans both pointed out, the entitlement spending isn't sustainable. But when you both say "reform" must come, I'm telling you reform is no longer possible without massive civil unrest and/or a massive depression.
Once the government finally begins decreasing expenditures by hundreds of billions of dollars in order to get a handle on the national debt, it will translate into massive layoffs and less consumption throughout the entire economy. Health care now makes up a ridiculous percentage of the economy, and once the spigot begins to tighten that means less dollars will flow to not only doctors and nurses, but also millions of paper pushers who never should have been part of the medical system to begin with. But they are part of the system, and when their positions are eliminated or their income is reduced, the ripples will tear apart the economy.
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LOL. That's not what I said at all. I didn't say the economy was able to support a bigger military commitment back then. I said we chose to do that back then, and that was because we considered the Soviet Union to be an existential threat that needed to be contained. We COULD do that now if we had to, but why should we? There is no national security threat at level. The defense increases I favor are pretty modest.
There may not be an existential threat now, but if you listen to the wacky neocons both inside and outside of the military and their media stooges they certainly have been conveying the idea both terrorism and Russia are existential threats. But I agree with you that there aren't any existential threats to the US mainland. There is no country on Earth currently capable to project power across the Ocean and invade the United States. Not Russia and certainly not Islamic terrorists.
So why then do you propose increasing the budget any at all? The common belief is that Russia and or Islamic terrorists present threats to US allies. Those are flat out lies. Russia is an economic threat because they are a competitor in terms of resources and the possibility of collaborating with China and the Eurasian countries which are projected to be the engine of growth for the next several decades. But people aren't going to back military spending if we say the reason for it is to dominate the world economically. Nobody wants to have their son go to Afghanistan in order to make stock prices higher. But if they believe their son if going to Afghanistan to stop an (fictional) invasion and make America safe they'll buy it. Europe is in danger of Islamic terror as a result of their own immigration policies combined with America's wars which drives more Muslims into Europe to escape the calamity.
In addition, don't think I'm blind to military waste. Despite what you might assume, I know it's there. I've seen plenty of waste with my own eyes. It's small stuff, but compounded throughout the military, it would add up. And of course, the way the military procures equipment is extremely political, especially for big ticket items, and that political influence creates enormous waste. See the F-35. It's a waste by itself, and if we end up dumping the A-10 and replacing it with more F-35s it'll be an even bigger waste - and for a crappier plane. The KC-X contract was a total hustle. And of course, one of the biggest was the A-12 shitpile, and I know one of the lawyers who worked on the litigation. That turned to crap 25 years ago, and the litigation didn't get resolved until 2014 - cost the taxpayers billions, and they didn't even get a friggin' plane. (Hell, even Dick Cheney thought the taxpayer was getting hosed in that deal.)
The waste is bad enough, but it goes beyond waste to out and out crime, theft, and looting. And nobody knows how much. The more we interject ourselves into foreign entanglements, the more tax dollars gets stolen. The estimate in both Iraq and Afghanistan is many, many billions. Just today, ZeroHedge reported this latest scandal. It's relatively small ($50 Million) but it gives you an idea of what goes on.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-...-cars-guns-booze-mentor-afghan-intel-officers
Read that and tell me you aren't pissed off.