Paul Scott comment: "What does 'rebuilding our military' mean?"

(Chart from the U.S. Department of Defense budget summary)

News reporters get paid to ask the questions no one wants to hear asked.  That's just one of the reasons many news reporters are disliked--there are many others!

At the risk of getting our e-mail inbox flooded, I would like to discuss an issue that is getting a lot of play from Presidential candidates--defense spending.

Republicans Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are the latest candidates to visit Decorah and to say the military has been "weakened" and needs to be rebuilt.  Their statements got a lot of applause.

But here come the uncomfortable questions.  You can look at the chart above to see a summary of the federal defense budget or--if you're really a geek--you can read the Department of Defense's summary of the military budget at : http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2016/FY2016_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf

As the chart shows, in the ten years since the September 11th attacks, our defense budget has increased by $241 BILLION dollars--from $287 billion in FY 2001 to $528 billion in FY 2011.   The Pentagon budget has gone down by $33 billion in the four years since FY 2011, but, of course, the Iraq war has wound down since then--at least somewhat.  In FY 2015, military spending still accounts for around 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending.

Interestingly, experts say only $5 billion of the Pentagon budget is devoted to fighting ISIS.  That's less than half of the $11 billion the Pentagon has spent on the F-35 jet fighter--which hasn't flown yet.

So here are the uncomfortable questions: 1) "How much more money should be spent on defense?"  2) "Where is that money coming from?" (Rubio, for instance, spoke at length about requiring balanced budgets) and 3) "What will we get for spending that extra money?"

Of course, the possible answers to these questions ("Raising taxes") don't get as much applause as saying "We're going to bomb ISIS into the Stone Age."