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How to Cut the
Federal Deficit
By Delbert Blickenstaff
Almost all Americans want to cut the federal deficit. There is an easy
way to accomplish this. The bipartisan deficit commission found that
$100 billion a year could be saved from the Pentagon budget by getting
rid of obsolete Cold War-era weapons. So why doesn’t congress do
something about this?
In my opinion the military-industrial complex, about which President
Eisenhower warned us, has done a very effective job of controlling the
voting in congress. This is accomplished by “political engineering,”
which means that production of each weapons system is spread out over a
number of congressional districts. Lobbyists then convince members of
congress that their constituents will think them “soft on terrorism” if
they don’t vote in favor of building more weapons.
When we ordinary citizens become fully aware that 58% of federal
discretionary spending for FY2011 is military, I think that we will
tell our people in congress to cut spending where most of the money is
being spent, not health (5%), or education (4%), or housing (6%).
Delbert Blickenstaff
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