The 2015 Government Budget

My two big pet peeves with government spending are War and Foreign Aid. Congress just passed the 2015 Appropriations Bill (budget/spending/whatever you want to call it). Let’s take a look at how much they decided to spend overseas this year.

Afghanistan - Afghanistan will get an undisclosed amount of money as soon as the Afghan government implements a "bilateral security agreement with the united States". Translation: The Afghan higher-ups will receive an exorbitant bribe to line their pockets as long as they agree to spend some of the money on American made weapons, vehicles, and other armaments.

Ebola - $5.4 billion of American's hard earned money will be shipped all over the world to "fight Ebola." L.O.L.

Egypt - I guess the federal government feels guilty for throwing Egypt into economic instability and civil unrest, so they're sending $1.3 billion in military aid (see Afghanistan above) and $150 million in economic aid.

Foreign Embassies - $5.4 billion to build and maintain embassies all over the world. In the age of the internet, embassies hardly seem necessary. Just Skype the dude you want to talk to for free.

International Affairs - $39 billion. Sorry, I have no clue what this means.

Israel - $3.7 billion is going to Israel. Real talk. $3.7 billion to a country with a GDP of over $291 billion.

Jordan - $1 Billion to help with the millions of Syrian refugees displaced from their homes in Syria as a result of US military interventions in Syria.

National Defense – $566.5 billion

Overseas Military Operations – An additional $58.6 billion earmarked to either fight against or train: ISIS, Iraqis, Kurds, Syrians, Ukrainians, and other Baltic Nations. The funny thing is the US government trained ISIS, now they’re fighting against them. They trained Iraqis (1981), fought against them (1990), trained them again (1992), fought against them again (2003-2010), now they’re training them again. The Syrians: the US Military trained counterinsurgents (aka ISIS), then fought against them, and are now paying to train other counterinsurgents to fight against the original counterinsurgents they trained.

Veterans - $159.1 billion. The long-lasting costs of long-lasting wars.

This really isn’t even a scratch on the surface of all the ridiculous policies in the proposed $3 trillion spending budget – just the ones that irk me the most. I can’t help but ask myself: how well off would the average American be without Foreign Wars and Foreign Aid?

One more interesting thing to note: The US spends (conservatively) $640 billion/year on the military – by far the most in the world. If you combine the next 9 greatest military expenditures by country – China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, India, and South Korea – their total is $641 billion/year.


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