there's no excuse for them to claim they can't afford to do something
>2012
2015?
As you can see Social security and Medicare form a large part of the spending.
So why do we spend so much on military? Well not all that money goes to our military. A lot of goes into NATO defense. We have military bases all over the world. It costs money to keep them running. You got buy fuel for the ships to transport fuel, you got to buy fuel for the equipment for the things you are transporting. The military personnel occupying those bases have to get paid, we pay even for the countries we occupy to use that land for our bases. That equipment there also has to be maintained. Vehicles and weapons go through lots of wear and tear and require new parts which have to be shipped and replaced by a trained technician.
Munitions have a limited shelf life, things like missiles, bombs, grenades, etc go bad. Once they go past their shelf life, they become dangerous to operate.
We are also throwing money at these countries to fund their own militaries. However since the Cold War many countries in the EU scaled down their militaries, some even abandoned entirely. The German Bundeswehr trains with broom handles and they can barely defend themselves because of it, so they expect us to pull their asses out the fire when things go bad.
Technology also changes over time, if you don't keep up with the times then you are screwed. Poland and France for example had army fit to fight the first World War, but their army wasn't prepared to fight a war like WW2. Plus countries try to modernize whenever they can. Russia for example has begun a massive modernization program.
If you want turn your back on and pretend like everything is fine while shrinking our sphere of influence, alright. However I think we should encourage the nations we occupy to build up a force large enough that they can support that wont require us. However that isn't likely because we are seen free protection.
Poll