wrote in message
...
On Thu, 7 Oct 2010 10:48:17 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

What????? It's about $1M/year/troop. I think you missed something
somewhere...
I am just quoting the number that is floating around CNN and MSNBC
this week.

The $1m a year is DoD overall and includes that soldier painting rocks
white outside an officer's club in Arkansas and a sailor working at
the Base Exchange in Norfolk

And how much of the DOD budget is pork of non DOD spending? the first
Supplemental spending bill for Iraq was something like 24% pork. I have
said for years to get us out of most of Europe and a lot of other lands.
Japan, until they decided to spend excessively like we are presently doing,
was doing really well as their total cost for Civil Defense was only about
6% of GDP. That included Fire, Police, National Guard, Coast Guard, etc.
Gave them about 10% extra of GDP for financing companies to take business
away from the US and other lands. Yes we can cut defense spending 25% as
well. But where is the basis for spending on NEA? Or other really
discretionary items like that? Dept. of Education was not even a department
until about 1974. What is their budget now? How many employees? How much
did spending go up during the Clinton years? Just like California, they
spent the windfall of the dot.com boom, without saving any of the windfall.
Plus they committed the spending in to future years. Clinton came closer to
balancing the budget, only because there was a tremendous surge in Federal
Revenues from all those IPO's. They took about 36.5% of every IPO. 35% top
tax rate and 1.5% Medicare tax. No upper limits on either. Look at the
vote buying via Medicare and the drug benefits. Totally out of control
spending.