Cut Foreign Aid! Foreign Military aid that is.

As has been widely reported, Republicans have no interest in making up for budget short falls by increasing taxes. They would instead like to cut spending, but when asked what to cut they produce the most minuscule programs possible. The biggest cut they mention is to the Foreign Aid budget which is roughly $40 billion or around 1% of the total budget. Not a big number. It becomes even less impressive when you consider that at our current foreign aid spending rates we only spend about half of what European nations spend on foreign aid (based on per person spending). We are already the cheap uncle for the world and we want to cut back even further. That should be great for foreign relations.

Having said that we could cut another form of foreign aid and have twice the impact of cutting all of our Foreign Aid budget - Military spending abroad. In a recent report from the Sustainable Defense Task Force they suggest cutting around 50,000 troops from non combat areas where they are basically in a support or show of force type role. This would include places like Europe and Asia where the local military is strong enough on its own and the country is an ally. They estimate a savings of around $80 billion per year for this plan. They offer a litany of other possible cuts to unnecessary programs or projects which would cut over $1 trillion in military spending over the next decade, but since Republicans are so excited to cut Foreign Aid I thought this would act as a good primer for compromise. Just don't tell Mitch McConnell.