Waste.

Editor,

In economic terms, spending on "defense" -- buying weapons of mass destruction and paying to maintain a large standing army -- is consumptive.

In contrast, spending on education, infrastructure, and health care are stimulative because the dollars spent improve the profitability of businesses.

For example, building a freeway into an undeveloped area provides opportunity for developers and other "job creators" to build housing developments and shopping malls, with all the follow-on business activity and employment these entail.

If the government buys a tank or an aircraft carrier, the government owns it and must spend precious taxpayer dollars on manning and maintaining it. No growth in GDP is stimulated by such an expenditure, no future tax receipts are increased; no private sector jobs are created (beyond designing and building WMD) by "defense" spending.

For a party supposedly obsessed with decreasing the deficit and creating jobs, the Republicans certainly know how to waste a lot of money.

Re: "Staring Into the Budget’s Abyss" (11/8/2011)