At 06:43 PM 2/19/97 -0800, you wrote: >As a practical matter, now is not a bad time to >resume demands for defense spending reductions. >The latest Brookings "Setting Nat'l Priorities" >has a useful study suggesting the defense budget >could very safely be brought down to $200 billion >in five years, and with some cooperative >agreements with Russia and others, that figure >could be considerably lower. The point here is >not to take as sacred what Brookings says about >national security, but to exploit a proposal >from a non-radical source to knock a good chunk >off the defense budget. The other reason to do it now is to try to hook it to the issue of "corporate welfare" (are there any defense cows, like the B-2, in that coalition's proposal?). For ex, what the hell are we doing paying for a _merger_ between defense companies? Hitting this kind of abuse may not save us a huge amount of money, but it might create the political climate that would make serious cuts in defense possible. >Of course, when an asteroid exceeding >about 2 mi. in diameter hits the earth, it will >have paid to borrow after all, since much of the >consequent interest payments will be avoided. In >the long run we all file for bankruptcy and >repudiate our debts. I look forward to your EPI briefing paper, "Borrow Till Kablooie." Anders Schneiderman Progressive Communications
