Thread by @gauravsabnis

"Bro, US defense budget is not a trillion, lol, it is 750 billion, get your facts straight"

No, bro, 750 bn is *just* the Pentagon budget. US spends another 200-300 bn under other budgetary allocation on this supposed defense.

Lemme list some of those.

https://twitter.com/gauravsabnis/status/1506030533872074752

The most outrageous creative accounting and legislating in this regard is that the cost of actual ongoing foreign wars and operation. That is a separate budget! So the 20 year war in Afghanistan for example, was *NOT* paid for out of the main Pentagon budget but "OCO" budget.

What is OCO you ask? Best embezzlement plus money laundering scheme ever!

All these actual wars we've fought and countries we've bombed in the last 20 years, that didn't come out of the 750 bn. It was a separate money heist, in terms of budgeting.

Hides the actual true costs.

Also not covered under the Pentagon budget is the Department of Veteran Affairs. Over $100 bn spent every year on taking care of soldiers we sent to fight these pointless wars is not part of that $750 bn. It's a separate entity budgetarily.

That's one spending I'm ok with.

The least we can do is take care of those we unnecessarily sent to bomb and rebuild and bomb and rebuild roads and airports in faraway countries instead of in America, to is to give them dedicated top quality healthcare and other support.

Republicans want to privatize even that!

Budgets for the State Department & the Department of Homeland Security (established as a response to 9/11) are also separate. Those come to about $125 bn.

Then there are components of the Department of Justice budget that are also spent on "defense" like the FBI etc.

There are other such things spent on the so-called defense that easily add up to a trillion.

And that's *just* what we spend from the federal budget.

All 50 states also incur separate additional costs for "national defense". Defending against an actual land and air invasion.

These mobsters loot a trillion dollars from us every year for "the best military in the world".

When the actual first responders of the only actual attack on the US this century have to go begging to Congress regularly for *just* $4-5 billion a year. And GOP creates hurdles.

The amount of taxpayers money that the US and other NATO countries spend in the name of "defense", when added up, is about $1.5 trillion.

The ENTIRE Russian GDP is $1.5 trillion! And yet NATO can't stop Vlad from regularly invading countries.

What the hell?

And we are withholding a piddly $7 bn of Afghanistan's money while people starve.

We don't fully comprehend how much a trillion dollars is, especially to spend on "defense" that can't stop Putin or even Taliban.

Amazon, Apple, and Google's annual revenues combined are a bit less than a trillion dollars.

And those companies at least give us stuff.

We say we don't build public transport everywhere cos "who will pay for it".

NYC's rickety train system is the only real public transport in the country.

The amount we spend on "defense" in just ONE year would fund NYC public transport for SIXTY years! 60 years!!

We can't have universal healthcare because "who will pay for it"?

While we spend a trillion dollars on supposed "defense". And left Iraq & Afghanistan in ruins. And can't do anything in Ukraine.

"On what basis do you say just a 15% cut in one year's defense budget could vaccinate the entire world?"

On the basis of arithmetic.

reuters.com/business/healt…

Can you imagine anything that would contribute more to the defense and safety of the United States than the goodwill generated worldwide by saying, folks, we are done vaccinating our people. Now we will use our military to give free vaccines to the whole world!

You know what else *just* a 15% cut in US defense spending for just ONE year could buy us?

About 500 miles (800 km) of world class subway train systems. That is twice the length of the entire NYC system.

Literally every major city could get subways in a decade.

Even that 15% cut would leave us with a bigger military budget than the rest of the world combined thirty times over.

And we could build European or Japanese level subway systems for literally every big city in the United States without raising any taxes.

The biggest con job "libertarians" and "fiscal conservatives" have pulled in recent years is getting us all upset about "who will pay" for tiny line items like National Parks, NASA (which BTW is also very defense related), National Endowment for Arts, Public Broadcasting, NSF etc

What makes that con job especially evil is that the US public spending that is NOT on the supposed "defense" is actually spent really well and efficiently, all things considered. The US "welfare state" component is on the whole doing the job it's supposed to do. It needs more $$.

But that gospel of "taxation is theft" treats "defense" spending as a separate untouchable deity.

While the progressive built largely efficient and corruption-free Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are treated like the devil to be vanquished.

Btw all these numbers and facts about the US defense budget? It's not like I went sleuthing or got some background info from experts.

It's literally all there in the open on government website. Painstakingly detailed account of the embezzlement & money laundering.