We see over the years a constant attack on foreign aid and pork projects (earmarks) as the major problems preventing a balancing of the federal budget and causing our tremendous deficits.
This is as far from the truth as one can get, as President Obama indicated in a Town Hall meeting on Tuesday. An investigation proves that only one percent of the budget is foreign aid, and earmarks, despite all the complaints and publicity about them, only add up to three tenths of one percent of the federal budget!
Demagogues on the right love to complain about earmarks, and yet it is both parties and all politicians who come to Washington with the intention of accomplishing improvements for their districts and states. But even with that reality, it is less than one third of one percent of the budget, so neither that nor foreign aid to support stability in foreign nations come anywhere near solving or dealing with our national budgetary crisis.
However, fighting two wars at once, neither one of which really makes for national security and kills off so many young men and women, is the real villain in our budgetary crisis! Will we ever learn that what we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq is not accomplishing anything, except to antagonize that part of the world and bleed us dry, both in manpower and in finances? 🙁
Republicans argue that the biggest problem with the budget is healthcare spending, but I agree with you that the biggest problem with the federal budget is war spending.
The good news is that Obama said in his State of the Union Address that we would pull out of Iraq by the end of his first term. Hopefully he pulls out of Afghanistan too.