Admiral Mullen: Debt is going to cripple our military

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Grandluxe, Oct 23, 2012.

  1. October 22, 2012: 11:24 PM ET

    "A nation with our current levels of unsustainable debt ... cannot hope to sustain for very long its superiority from a military perspective, or its influence in world affairs," Admiral Michael Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month.

    The concern: If the debt continues to grow unbridled, the U.S. government will be constrained in its ability to pay for what it wants to do militarily and diplomatically. And it could limit the country's leverage with foreign powers.

    "You can't be strong around the world unless you're strong at home," said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who served as assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan.

    Even if the bond market doesn't jack up U.S. interest rates wildly, interest costs on the country's accumulated debt could top $900 billion by 2022.

    That's the equivalent of one-fourth of today's federal budget -- and about $200 billion more than the United States is currently spending on defense annually.

    http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/22/news/economy/national-security-debt/?source=cnn_bin
     
  2. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    But...no, this can't be! You must be mistaken. Ricter and the Keynesians (sounds like a bad rock group from the 80s) said that debt doesn't matter!