Wild budget math
In 2000, we spent 3.7% of GDP on the military. The Pentagon didn’t have to hold bake sales. We’re now spending 5.4%. Merely going back to 2000 would save 1.7% of GDP, or $255 billion. If over the next decade we spent 3.7% of GDP instead of 5.4%, we’d save $3.6 trillion. That’s close to what many of the deficit hawks are aiming for. Let the Bush tax cuts expire and bump up the top rate a few points and everyone could have free child care and free college tuition!
Of course to do that would be unAmerican.
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
Paul Krugman will propose the same idea next week
I have an even better idea, Doug…how about we go further and reduce defense to the pre-Reagan era AND restore the pre-Reagan progressive tax levels…AND mix in financial transaction and carbon/fossil fuels taxes??
We could then have single payer health care, an fully upgraded infrastructure, AND still have room for universal child care and free college tuition!!
Go big or go home, I always say.
Anthony
Doug, that’s soooooo pre-9/11 of you!
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But Doug, Obama has a jobs program… I read it this morning: “Obama to push tax credits for hiring veterans”. You see, the more war spending, the more wars; the more wars, the more veterans; the more veterans, the more tax-cut-incentivized jobs for Americans. You just don’t understand eleventy-seven-dimensional chess, do you?
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