Russia Today: Lawrence Korb- 'US Defense Budget Higher Than Ever'

Source:Russia Today- Lawrence Korb: Assistant Secretary of Defense, in the Reagan Administration.

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From Wikipedia 

"When it comes to making decisions about how to save the US from the economic crisis, many people claim the cuts should come from defense spending. 20 percent of the US total budget goes to defense spending, which has many Americans disgusted, but the US' Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, begs to differ.  Will cuts damage US security? Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, gives us his take on how defense cuts will affect the US. 

From Russia Today

Anytime you are involved in deficit reduction you have to look at the entire Federal budget to get the most savings as possible while hurting the least as possible. And you especially have to look at areas where you spend the most and the Defense budget represents around 20% of our Federal budget and 5% of our GDP. But you shouldn't cut defense in ways that hurts your national security obviously, but what you do is cut in areas that you don't need to spend as much or shouldn't be spending at all. 

According to GAO (Government Accountability Office) we can't even get an audit of the Defense Department and we don't know how large our Defense budget is. And the Defense Department also wastes around 100B$ a year in a 700B$ Budget which should be more evidence for the need to cut here. Because they are not very good with the money they get as far as spending it properly. 

What we shouldn't be doing is cutting in areas that directly relate to our national security if we were under attacked in some way. And we needed to respond right away but where we can cut is in some of the areas where we are currently responsible for the national security of other nations. And I'm talking about defending developed nations, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Korea, and demand that they play a bigger role in their own national security. And bringing our troops home and using that revenue to help pay down the debt and deficit. 

Libertarians and Democratic Socialists believe that since the United States spends the most on defense than any other nation in the world combined, that we should move towards a European style defense Budget, where they on average only spend around 1.5% of their GDP on defense. But the problem with that is the reason why Europe only spends around 1.5% of their GDP on defense, is because they know America has its back in their own national security. If we took that money away from them, as well as personal and other resources, they would have to make up the difference or see their defense get weaken. 

I don't want to see America go down to 1.5% of our GDP on defense. We still have too many threats facing us and need to be strong. But we could get by with 200B$ a year less on defense 500B$ a year for our Defense budget or 3% of GDP and be fine. 

What America needs to do as a country is take a bigger lead in securing its own national security and deal with its own domestic problems, which we have plenty of. And let these other developed nations take the lead and responsibility in defending themselves. This saying is starting to sound old but thats because of only how true it is: America can no longer afford to be the sole policemen of the world. Other developed nations need to step up to the plate and play their part as well.