So Boeing gets awarded a $30 billion contract to provide new refueling tankers? Ok, so the current fleet is way old and should have been replaced years ago, but let's look at the priorities:
$30 billion for new tankers while we 'need' to do this:
save billions of dollars more, including annual savings of $445 million from cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $335 million annual savings from combined cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, $1.565 billion annual savings in cuts to Amtrak, and $52 million annual savings from cuts in the national Energy Star program.
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Look at those numbers in relation to the $30 billion price tag.
Then ponder this:
- $55 billion for the CIA as part of Obama's budget proposal - source
- $671 billion for the Defense Department requested in the above proposal (including $118 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan alone) - source
- year after year $3 billion goes to Israel in pure military spending - source
- The Obama budget proposal also features $1.1 billion to be devoted to the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund - source
- $8.3 billion in latest budget request just to run federal prisons - source
I could keep going, but really this country needs to reexamine its priorities. Do we want to keep feeding the MIC and keep playing superpower or do we need to address such issues as the alarmingly widening gap between rich and poor, runaway health care costs, increasingly unaffordable cost of higher education, crumbling transport infrastructure, lagging telecommunications infrastructure, unsustainable incarceration rates, etc.
One last quote:
Even if Congress adopts Defense Secretary William Gates’ proposed five-year “cut” of $78 billion, military spending will increase. Secretary Gates only wants to slow the rise.
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