How good is the condition of the U.S. military after 3 years of Trump?

[jon_norstog]

Anarchists do it without government interference!

jn

[Vern Humphrey]

\

Remember Bill Clinton balanced the budget and reduced the deficit briefly. He still brags about it. What he doesn't brag about is that he starved our military doing it enabling countries like China to catch up. Giving and selling them our military secrets helped them as well. It will take decades (if ever) to recover.

The Rosenberg's were executed for far less.

Our military should always be fully funded but checks put on waste.

Actually, the debt increased every year under Clinton (albeit slowly.) His claim to reducing the debt is based on considering Social Security a source of funding, not a trust.

[blackhawknj]

Since so much of Defense spending either involves bases and their civilian employees or contractors and their employees, trying to cut spending there causes job losses and angry voters. So the politicians go after the Operations and Maintenance budget, which leads to incredible short term savings. And long term problems.

[Vern Humphrey]

Since so much of Defense spending either involves bases and their civilian employees or contractors and their employees, trying to cut spending there causes job losses and angry voters. So the politicians go after the Operations and Maintenance budget, which leads to incredible short term savings. And long term problems.

It's all so damn' political. For example, contracts require the winning contractor to open an office in a certain congressional district, or that congressman will vote against the program. Fully half of all military spending is done to get votes for congressmen.

[blackhawknj]

Contractors make sure to spread the work around enough so that even anti-defense spenders have to think twice before a "No" vote.

[RED]

For that you can thank Dick Nixon, who dismantled the Merchant Marine just when I got out of the USCG and was planning on spending my life at sea.

In my book, Nixon was the worst President in the twenty first century. Worse than Carter, worse than Clinton, worse than JFK, and worse than Coolidge. His wage and price freeze caused the runaway inflation and the devastating 1981 "recession." He ended the gold standard allowing the Fed to print dollars pretty much at will.

Many of todays healthcare problems was spawned by the Nixon wage/price freeze. If you had a very productive, hard working, outstanding, employee, you couldn't give him a pay raise and so the employers devised a system to reward excellence in the work place. They were prerequisites or "perks." Group health and life insurance was created and now we know now what that did.

[togor]

The Gold Standard! US GDP has gone up by ~10X since 1975. That means the demand for money to facilitate commerce has gone up by that much. No way that happens on the gold standard. Added irony in that the current administration wants to print money like we're in another Great Depression while telling us this the Best Economy Ever.

[Former Cav]

certainly better then BHO's economy, or W's for that matter!