Here’s a nice little piece from The Economist’s DIA blog. As they say, “Welcome to the world of the budget choices you need to make, when you refuse under any circumstances to raise taxes.”
The blog post, discussing an article from Politico, does a good job of pointing out the choices the Republicans are making in their proposed budgets, but the last paragraph is why I wanted to post this:
“…But the point is that our cost-benefit calculations here are obviously ridiculously out of whack. We are talking about forcing large numbers of actual Americans into poverty to qualify for food stamps, in order to guard against an imperceptible increase in the risk that at some point America’s overwhelming dominance in air superiority in every corner of the globe might marginally degrade, leading to…what? What is the risk? What is the threat? How much actual food are we willing to take out of the mouths of poor Americans right now, to ensure that we have a couple of hundred more American fighter jets that are even more dominant over Chinese or Russian fighter jets decades from now in a hypothetical war of a variety that is almost certainly never, ever going to happen again? How many poor families’ dinners do you have to take away to pay for our 2,443rd F-35? In a non-monetary sense, how many poor families’ dinners is our 2,443rd F-35 worth? Because I have trouble seeing how it’s even worth one.”