It’s interesting to read about the battle over budget cuts to lower the federal debt. Or maybe depressing is a better adjective. Despite the mandate for spending reforms from the midterm elections, campaign platitudes seem to have taken a back seat to “scary” rhetoric like “shutting down the government.” Nearly everyone seems to agree on the need for spending cuts, as long as it affects someone else, and that’s where the blame starts. As I once heard it said there is “always another emergency to justify spending more money, but there is never an emergency to justify spending less money.”

Let’s consider the defense budget. Given the incomparable reach and might of our military, you’d expect America would have the largest defense budget in the world. And you’d be right. By the numbers, it’s a $700 billion colossus that is not only larger than the defense budget of any other nation but larger than the sum total of the defense budgets of all other nations. Since the defense budget dwarfs all other “discretionary” spending (only the “entitlement” budgets for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are larger), you’d think this budget would be “on the table” during any discussion about spending cuts. But you’d be wrong.