Odd Blog Couple: Military Spending and Health Care
January 15, 2008 by Miranda Marquit
Filed under Finance
I’m paired with Taxgirl for B5 Business Channel’s Odd Blog Couple. Here is our question:
If you could increase federal spending in one area and decrease it in another, what would you choose?
First, though, I’ll mention the decrease. Military aid to other countries. We spend billions propping up armies in a variety of countries. 9/11 was used as an excuse to throw even more money at other countries’ military efforts. And has it actually increased our security? Nearly all intelligence says no. Check out the 
Center for Public Integrity’s numbers on military spending on other countries. Just reducing the amount we spend on militaries in other countries by half could help us reap great rewards.
What I’d increase? Well, if we weren’t always throwing money at other countries’ military efforts, we could reform health care in this country. My ideal is a universal health care plan similar to what Mitt Romney instituted in Massachusetts. He proved that you could balance the budget and rein in health care costs.
Bonus: Other areas I’d like to see decreased spending in include Iraq war, pork barrel spending and earmarks, corporate welfare subsidies and preferential tax treatment for large companies.
I’d like to see more spending on education.
I’m with you on decreasing US military spending in other countries. I just read in today’s paper that more US soldiers were being deployed in Mindanao, here in the Philippines.
While it may make the government happier when the U.S. gives it money and military personnel, many of the actual people are annoyed, I’ve found. My husband lived in the Philippines for a while, and he said many of the people resented the U.S. military presence.
In general, it would just be a nice change if our so-called leaders spent at least some of the money and effort cleaning up our own backyard before they tried cleaning up everyone else’s.