Trump lays out plan to bankrupt the USA

[Skroe]

I

Effectively this. People need to stop thinking like headless chicken that believe throwing money at something or taking money away is the solution to any problem. That is not how any military works.

Yep. Let me give you an example. Counter Piracy Operations off the coast of Somalia. To pay for the fleet of ships the US keeps there, the US spends money. It takes money to pay for the fuel and food. It takes money to replenish expended equipment and munitions. It takes money to pay the sailors. And when the ship comes back it takes money to do routine repairs on the ship. Furthermore because that ship is there, it is not in the Mediterranean, looking down at Russia, or in the South China Sea, looking down at China, which means those respective regions have fewer ships in them.

This is a mission the US Navy wasn't doing 20 years ago (at least to this extent). But to do it costs money and manpower.

So the question is, is a counter-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia worth paying for? Well that is a matter of perspective.

If you define loosely, that the job of the US Navy is to defend the international commons that allow US trade to move freely (an expensive definition of US interests), and prevent any rival navy from gaining control of a region, then yes, it is vital. But this is expensive. This means you need a truly massive fleet. The Chief of Naval Operations gave a number actually: 450 ships.

If you define tightly, the job of the US Navy, is to defend US physical security, then this mission is less important a target for substantial cutbacks. This would mean pulling fleets out of places like the Indian Ocean (effectively ceding them to Iran and China), and focusing them in the Atlantic and Pacific, as they were before World War II. With this, you can get away with 250 ships according to New America.


Instead, we have this shit situation where we have 273 ships, on our way to 308 in 3 years, with long term plans for 355, and a dreamy ambition of 410, that even then, won't be enough of the truly dreamed for 650 ships that some Admirals have put out.

I for one, think thinks like Counter-Piracy is important, and that we SHOULD fully fund defense. But regardless, the current situation is irresponsible. My best friend had two deployments to Afghanistan. He has a bachelor's degree. He was a decorated intelligence analyst in the US Army. He's an experienced professional. And his last year they had him and his unit mowing grass because Obama and Congress didn't want to pay for recruiting enough 17 and 18 year old privates with zero life skills, who hadn't paid their dues yet, to do jobs like that. Instead of actually doing the job he was trained for and paid for, he was doing yard work.

And as a civilian, it was fucking weird going to visit him at Fort Hood, to get in an uber that an off-duty 20 year enlisted soldier was driving.

This shit has to stop. Either the United States pays in full for it's global security responsibilities - and make no mistake, a 10% boost barely qualifies as a down payment - or we need to get out of the business entirely. And I don't mean lip service "we aren't the world police". I mean dropping the defense budget to $350 billion, abandoning NATO, Japan and South Korea, having a Navy of 200 ships and engaging in a territorial defense strategy. Just get ready to accept that there will be massive land wars in Asia and a spread of ballistic missile technology and nuclear weapons. And just accept that our kids will probably have to go clean that mess up, as two generations of kids did in the 20th century.

But no more of this "lets see how far we can stretch a dollar" bullshit.

[Draco-Onis]

One of the biggest contradiction of Trump's platform was always isolationism while at the same time growing the armed forces but nothing about Trump ever made sense.

[The Stormbringer]

"He won! Accept bankruptcy! Just get over it!"

Am I doing it right? Am I, Trump supporters?

[xChurch]

I don't get it, America has won pretty much all it's wars, occupation is what it sucks at. More money isn't really going to solve the issue since the only way to stop insurgency's is to basically use dictator tactics to quell the populace, or invest massively in said country.

[Alixie]

i love clickbait trump threads that source a news site which is openly opposed to Trump and the republican party.

just to clarify though, it is a great plan and i would vote for him again in 4 years if he does this.

Anyone who opposes Trump is automatically liberal/Democrat.

Those people located in red states/cities that are filling up Townhalls shouting, "Don't take away my Obamacare!" are clearly, paid liberal protesters.

[Wyrt]

I'm more concerned about what wars he's planning on fighting.

[PACOX]

Takes credit for a $12B deficit.

Proposes a $54B plan in a sector that already gets a ton of money.

I actually listened to the briefing Getting too hype in your car can cause accidents, needed to come down. Apparently they want to take money from a lot of social and civil sectors to feed the military machine.

But who the fuck is Donnie fighting?

[Adolecent]

Trump is seeking to boost defence spending by 10% in his proposed budget plan for 2018.

Just what the world ordered, a fascist regime with a large army.

[Unhinged]

Explain what's that got to do with the generations?

The boomers are in all positions of power and have abused the planet and it's economies with their unprecedented selfishness.

[Vulgrym]

Well he's bankrupted himself multiple times and refuses to release his taxes, so setting the country onto the path of insolvency shouldn't be too surprising to anybody.

[Auxora]

While the thread title is a little over the top, for a Republican Trump really likes spending. He wants to increase military funding 9%, is hiring 10,000-15,000 more ICE agents, there's the $10B+ wall with Mexico, and he has a massive infrastructure road/bridge spending plan that is going to be announced sometime in the next week or two. And so far the cost reductions have been few and far between. Maybe he'll end up being able to pay for all of this, but he's never been very specific as to how other than suggesting tariffs or better trade deals. But he hasn't implemented any of those yet and revenues from those are a long way off, plus are likely to be offset by retaliatory tariffs. Replacing the ACA with something that costs middle class workers a fortune out of pocket isn't going to be very popular. On top of all this, he's said he plans a major tax cut. It all sounds great, but the math isn't adding up and he's going to have to pay the piper from somewhere. I just worry that somewhere will be from the 99%.

[Skroe]

Please, still, explain why there should be a 54 billion increase ? Why there should be penny pinching over the food stamps and not over the F-35 ?

(I'm actually quite a conservative about fiscal policy and a balanced budget strikes me as a very desirable objective. However, I'm baffled that the damn food stamps are so much reviled while the F-35 overbudget woes are given a free pass ?)

POTUS Trump wants to pick fight with third world countries. Do you really need billion dollars bombers to do so ?

Why? Few reasons.

(1) The 1980s Era US military is being retired and needs a replacement, and the replacements are not cheap. F-16s, F-15s, F/A-18Cs, B-1B, Los Angeles-class attack submarines... they've largely expended their design life and need to be replaced. Some of these can have life extension applied to them (at some cost), but that can't go on indefinitely.

Here is but a sampling of what the transition looks like.

Carriers: The first of the Nimitz Class, the USS Nimitz, is schedule to retire in 2024. It's replacement, the USS John F Kennedy is currently under construction. All 10 Nimitzs will need to be replaced 1:1

Ballistic Missile Submarines: The Ohio class SSBN from the 1980s and 1990s will be retired starting in 2028, so the first-in-class successor is being built now. 12 of these will be built to replace 14 Ohio class subs.

Attack Submarines: The Navy has a requirement for 55 attack submarines. It is retiring 1-2 Los Angeles class Attack Sumbarines (built in the 1980s) and putting 1-2 Virginia class subs into service every year.

Bombers: The B-1B fleet will start retiring around 2030. It's replacement the B-21 raider program will build 100-200 bombers, in lots of 20, starting in 2021.

Ground Vehices: The Vietnam Era M113, which is unsafe to use against roadside bombs and modern anti-tank missiles, is being retired and replaced with the Turretless Bradley, which is more survivable.

'Low' Fighters: The last time the air force bought and F-16 was in 1996. THe F-16s bought between 1984-1988 are all being retired. The USAF has been retiring ~200 per year for the last five years. They need to be replaced with F-35s. A decade ago the F-16 fleet stood at 2000. Today it is at 900 and will be ~400 by 2024 before being zeroed by 2030. The requirement is ~1200 "F-16s/F-35s". The combination of F-35s and F-16s currently fulfills that.

'Air Superiority fighters': Back in 2002, 700 F-22s were supposed to replace 700 F-15Cs from the 1980s. Due to costs of the Iraq War this got cut to eventually a force through 2030 of 183 F-22s and 220 F-15Cs modernized into "Golden Eagle' configuration. By the time hte F-15C retires, it will have served for 50 years. To replace both of them beyond 2030 the Air Force is beginning a replacement program.

(2) 1990s era munitions are aging out. Keep in mind: explosives can get unstable as they get older. Every bomb, every missile the US military ever buys will need to eventually be fired or disposed of. Their replacements however, are much more capable and expensive. As an example, five years ago the US military had a stockpile of 10,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Most of these were first and second generation Tomahawks built in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. They've since largely been dismantled (or are awaiting disposal) and are being replaced by 3500 4th Generation Tomahawks, each valued at $2.1 million. These are much smarter, better weapons than the ones they are replacing, but also cost twice as much.

(3) Lifecycle costs are everything. To explain what I mean by this, let's consider the biggest procurement item for the US military: ships. And the most expensive part of the Navy's fleet costs are Carriers, Ballistic Missile Submarines and Attack Submarines, in that order. All of them are also nuclear.

All these ships are built to be refueled about halfway or 60% the way through their life. During a refueling, which costs about $500 million to $2 billion, the ship/sub is cut over, it's nuclear core removed and a new one put in. This sidelines the ship for about 3 years. In theory, instead of building new ships, the Navy could do a refueling on all it's carriers and submarines. For a carrier, this would be a quarter the cost of a carrier. For a submarine, this would be about a third the cost of a new one. The ships would also undergo a big overhaul.

However, just like owning an SUV is more expensive than owning a sedan due to fuel costs, the lifecycle costs of the 1980s vehicles are higher than more recent ones. For example, the Columbia-class replacement for the Ohio-class SSBN is being designed with a life-of-the-ship nuclear fuel core, so it'll never have to undergo a refueling. The Nimitz class's lifecycle costs are projected to be billions more than it's Ford class successor because the highly automated Ford class has a modern internal design and requires a smaller crew.

It comes down to how you want to spend your money. The Navy is very single minded in the fact that it would rather spend money now to save money later. To put it another way, a fleet of all Columbia-class SSBNs, in the 2040s, will be much less expenisve than the fleet of Ohio-class SSBNs is today. So it would like to transition to that.

That is how lifecycle costs work. During the Cold War, when budgets were on the scale of 10% of GDP, the Pentagon burned through fighter and ship designs in a decade or less. The focus was on procurement costs, not lifecycle costs. Today, because we spend about 3.5% of GDP on defense, the focus is how much everything the pentagon buys cradle-to-the-grave. It is by far, a more responsible way to think about procurement, but the US military as a whole is in a transition period: getting rid of hardware that had little attention paid to it's lifecycle costs when they were originally procured, and transitioning to one that was procured with that in mind.

If they get everything want and if the life cycle projections are accurate - a massive if - the idea is, the US military could do more while paying substantially less, on the other side of this modernization.




(4) You may ask why all this is happening? In a word: the Iraq War's costs have a very long tail.

The Military was supposed to get rid of it's 1980s era equipment in the mid 2000s. F-22s, Zumwalt class destroyers, the Future Combat System, the Virgina-class attack submarine and more all made up the nucleus of the vision. But the costs of the Iraq War grew so immense that it forced cancellations, delays ore massive reductions of pretty much every program envisioned to replace the 1980s era baseline.

What this did was delay the "modernization cycle" a decade, into the 2010s. And that day has arrived. From now (well really 2012) through 2030, the US will be doing a compressed, and much more expensive (as a result) version of what it was going to do a decade ago.

But we must remember this. THe next time the New York Times Editorial Page says something stupid like "The Pentagon should cancel the F-22... it's a cold war relic that is unlikely to be used this day in age, and should be replaced with a lower cost system"... remember what happens when that lower cost system turns out to be the F-35, which as a strike fighter can't do the F-22's air superiority job, leading to the 40 year old F-15C being life extended.



I want to emphasise: so much of this is not about wars, or foreign policy, or even the military. It's about budgeting and numbers. The wrong way to think about an aircraft carrier is as a $13 billion warship. The right way to think about it is a $25-28 billion (over 50 years) investment that will carry $9 billion in aircraft and $3 billion in weapons, all of which have their own lifecycle costs.


We talk a lot on these forums about the Russian military. Russia's inability to downshift from the Cold War is what crippled it's military power. They tried, and failed, to deal with these lifecycle issues. The US Military has done far better, but the time is coming due to wave goodbye the mighty F-16, and it's fellow generational symbols of American military might. If we don't, we'll fall into the same trap Russia did.

[Deletedaccount1]

$54 billion is nothing. If Trump had any balls or sense he'd be slashing the Ponzi schemes known as Medicare, Medicaid and social security as well as the military.

Instead he goes after Obamacare because he has a personal vendetta against his predecessor. Then he pulls money out of agencies like the state department which are struggling enough already to try and explain to 200 countries why Trump's policies look like he picks executive orders out of a hat randomly.

[mage21]

I don't think anyone can say that fiscally draining the US economy of money and funding the military is a wise move; more over draining environmental/science/social programs is a smart move either. Trump is doing all of that and then some, and meanwhile going to porkbarrel infrastructure to loyal constituencies more than likely. He states he's going to lower taxes as well; so I don't see how this will lower our debt - something the GOP was stringent on.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39108194

But, hey, lets blow all the cash, and pour it down the drain on bombs, walls, and bridges to nowhere. I'm sure we'll be fine after all is said and done, right?

Which social programs would those be?

[Elegiac]

$54 billion is nothing. If Trump had any balls or sense he'd be slashing the Ponzi schemes known as Medicare, Medicaid and social security as well as the military.

All of which are vital necessities for ensuring that people don't bankrupt themselves or die of easily preventable social and medical conditions.

So, no.

[Skroe]

All of which are vital necessities for ensuring that people don't bankrupt themselves or die of easily preventable social and medical conditions.

So, no.

Medicare should be block grants to states. And should be smaller. Among other reforms.
The size of the Medicaid block grant should be cut.

Social Security retirement age should be raised up. Way up.

Retiring at 65 when you're expected to live until you're 77 (male) and 80 (female) is not what social security's intention was. People are living for 12-15 years off a program designed to support them for 5.

As a matter of principle, we should spend less money on the old and more on the young. Never forget: Medicare Part D was paid for on Millenial's Credit Card.

[Deletedaccount1]

All of which are vital necessities for ensuring that people don't bankrupt themselves or die of easily preventable social and medical conditions.

So, no.

Those 3 programs are the block of America's $20 trillion debt and continue to grow unless someone does the politically unpopular thing and slashes them.

Like it or not, in a decade or so one of those programs is going to run out of money and the 3 generations of people who were raised on them are going to be in deeper shit than they've ever been in.

[Elegiac]

Medicare should be block grants to states. And should be smaller. Among other reforms.
The size of the Medicaid block grant should be cut.

No.

Social Security retirement age should be raised up. Way up.

To seventy, and no further.

As a matter of principle, we should spend less money on the old and more on the young. Never forget: Medicare Part D was paid for on Millenial's Credit Card.

I'm aware. But I'm not about to advocate the dismantling of what few edifices of public assistance the US has to satisfy the boner of some chickenhawks too chickenshit to raise taxes.

- - - Updated - - -

Those 3 programs are the block of America's $20 trillion debt and continue to grow unless someone does the politically unpopular thing and slashes them.

Like it or not, in a decade or so one of those programs is going to run out of money and the 3 generations of people who were raised on them are going to be in deeper shit than they've ever been in.

Here's a novel fucking idea: How about rather than cutting them, they get reformed to make them more cost effective.

[mage21]

Those 3 programs are the block of America's $20 trillion debt and continue to grow unless someone does the politically unpopular thing and slashes them.

Like it or not, in a decade or so one of those programs is going to run out of money and the 3 generations of people who were raised on them are going to be in deeper shit than they've ever been in.

Only if they depend on them. Now's a great time to plan for your future. Fire up that IRA.

[Barnabas]

I'm more concerned about what wars he's planning on fighting.

The same enemy obama ignored for the most part.