Defense spending is first budget buster to tackle

Stan Broselow, Las Vegas

Monday, Feb. 21, 2011 | 2:03 a.m.

We keep hearing that the only way to balance the national budget is to do something about the high cost of providing Social Security benefits to our seniors. Actually, not one penny of our huge deficit is attributable to the cost of Social Security.

Social Security is funded by payroll taxes and it is well established that the money collected is sufficient to pay the current obligations until at least 2017. So, if the Republicans really want to balance the budget, why don’t they stop talking about Social Security, which will not be part of the problem until 2017, and attack the real current budget busters — Afghanistan, Iraq, American troops around the world and defense hardware expenditures that even Defense Secretary Robert Gates says are unnecessary and should be eliminated by Congress.

We are spending too much money now. Work on current problems and defer future problems until after we solve our current ones.