Monday’s foreign policy debate between Obama and Romney was perhaps most memorable for the sharp exchanges the candidates traded on military spending. This year the U.S. will spend almost $700 billion on military expenditures (more than the next 13 countries combined). Mr. Romney often cites the statistic that the U.S. Navy now has fewer ships than it did in 1917. President Obama accused Mr. Romney of not understanding the needs of the modern U.S. military by claiming the military budget no longer needs “horses and bayonets.” Three days later Mr. Romney responded with a radio ad claiming “the state of our Navy, the state of our entire U.S. military is crucial for America.”
We took a closer look at each candidate’s position on future military spending:
Barack Obama: His “budget would not reduce military spending but maintain it.”
Mitt Romney: "We're going to cut about 5 percent of the discretionary budget, excluding military."
Gary Johnson: “US military spending is more than that of every other country combined... Defense spending must be subject to the same scrutiny as other areas of the budget.”
Jill Stein: “The numbers don’t add up. We can’t keep spending on this bloated military industrial security complex without paying the price here at home.”
Rocky Anderson: “Corruption of our military industrial complex, tax money that goes to military contractors, who are often little more than bloated pork barrels.”
Virgil Goode: “Part of the cuts have to be in the Department of Defense. We cannot do, as Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan suggest, increased military funding by $2 trillion over the next decade.”
Where do you side on military spending?