David Stockman Challenges Economy-Harming, Unnecessary US Military Spending

written by adam dick

tuesday february 13, 2018

Watch out for a recession and more trouble for American stocks ahead, warned investing, economy, and politics writer David Stockman in a Monday interview at Fox Business. Hearing Stockman’s informative analysis about that alone should be reason enough for people concerned about the economic outlook in America or their investments to watch the interview. But, Stockman also provides in the interview compelling analysis of the role United States military spending will play in causing coming economic problems in America while failing to make Americans any safer.

Stockman, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Ronald Reagan administration, says DC politicians who say military spending needed to be increased in the spending bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on Friday are “full of it.” Instead of having been too low, Stockman says there is already a “crazy” amount of US military spending, noting that such spending far exceeds that of nations — Stockman mentions China, Russia, and Iran — that are labeled as “so-called hostiles.”

The fact that the US military is “conducting seven wars that we don’t need to have,” explains Stockman, is why there are the troubles with military readiness that people are using to justify further military spending increases. You want a military that is actually ready to defend America, then “get out of these wars” from Somalia to Syria to Afghanistan, argues Stockman. What is happening in these places, argues Stockman, “is not a threat to the interests of the United States.”

Stockman also explains that the desire for more military spending among some DC politicians led them to agree to increase spending in other areas as well to ensure passage of the spending bill. “Well, here’s the scandal of it,” comments Stockman, “to get $82 billion for a defense increase that they don’t need — no way do they need, they agreed to give the Democrats $65 billion more of domestic spending that we absolutely can’t afford.” The combined “warfare state” and “welfare state” spending, Stockman says, threatens “to kill the financial outlook of this country.”

And all this military spending is not even making Americans safer or improving conditions where the US intervenes militarily. As an example, Stockman talks about ISIS. He explains that “we created ISIS” through the US government’s devastation of Iraq via the Iraq War followed by ISIS taking up the weapons the US military left behind. The lesson, says Stockman, a member the advisory board for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, is that “we should stop intervening everywhere in the world.”
Watch Stockman’s complete interview here:

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