by ARBKAL
afiggatt wrote:Also $53 billion is an around 4 weeks of current DOD funding, not even including the costs for the continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
David Benton wrote:4 weeks defence spending , wow .According to this article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2011/ ... ts-021011/
"On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers rolled out a plan to give the Pentagon about $518 billion, which is about $1 billion more than the 2010 level".
Just an FYI, a 2011 budget has yet to be passed, so they are operating at 2010 budget levels. If you do the math, that comes out to be 39.6 billion in 4 weeks. Mind you, that has to cover four branches of service, and all the current development costs, project costs,etc for each branch, as well as costs for Iraq and Afghanistan. Some would argue argue its still too much, but others would argue that it inst enough (if you look around the web, there is alot of info on how drastic some cuts have had to be for the military).
Also to consider: The size of Amtrak's operations is quite a bit smaller than that of the cargo/logistical operations of the USAF alone. So its not as clean cut as "this department gets more than that department, they should be equal."
Back on topic: There is still no denying that the DoD's budget is enormous compared to any proposed HSR funding, and I am sure Amtrak could do quite a bit with just 4 weeks worth of the DoD's budget. I'd love to see the $53 billion pass for HSR/Amtrak.
*Note: I am not trying to start the debate on if the DoD's budget is necessary, just providing facts. Please, keep this conversation on topic so it doesn't get locked by the mods.*