the military budget and the war spending in iraq and afghanistan. it was about $700 billion, way more than double. now, here is something else kind of amazing. that is a bigger increase in total in spending than we saw in either the vietnam war or the cold war, and here is where it left us. we re spending more than china, the uk, france, indiana, saudi arabia, india, and canada, combined. we re spending more on our military than the next dozen high spenders combined. our wars, now, however are ending. officially the war in iraq is over. the war in afghanistan is drawing down, osama bin laden is dead. spending dropped somewhere between 43 and 33%. now speak about that after you listen to these warnings about the military sequester.
politically stronger position now than he was in july of 2011? well, i think the whole republican conference is in a very different position than it was in 2011. as to your top question does he speak for the conference? absolutely. but the situation is very different now than it was last summer. last summer you had a newly elected republican congress and president obama looking to increase tax at a time he had previously said five months earlier it wasn t a good idea for the economy. now it s a very different situation. now every american is facing a tax increase on january 1st. military sequester will hit by the end of the year if they don t do anything. the impetus is there to get a deal done. i m confident that something can happen. if you look at all the pieces, it can be negotiated fairly easily. does boehner have and i m going to be blunt here. there always was this is eric cantor going to undermine him? that always was the conventional wisdom in washington whether that was
significant in year one and million stair respending begins to grow after year one. if we could eliminate the military sequester in year one and replace it with real cuts, not ten-year cuts, real cuts now i would be in agreement with that. we need to audit the pentagon. the pentagon says they are too big to be aeutded and i think that is an insult to the taxpayers. bill: you re known as someone who is a little tight on the budget. you disagree with senator mccain a little bit on the military issue i take it? yeah i think we will find efficiencies in military spending if we reduce the top-line number. we have to keep in perspective that we doubled military spending over the last ten years. i think we can have a strong defense and spend less, and it s ultimately the compromise, if republicans are willing to do that, democrats have to be willing to cut domestic spending. both spending needs to come down. we have a trillion dollar deficit. if we don t start cutting everywhere, across the
issue? senators john mccain and kelly ae aiotte aeu cues accuse the president as being m. i. a. he needs to act as the commander-in-chief and prevent the cuts, which in the words of the secretary of defense would devastate our national security. unfortunately the president has chosen not to do this. bill: kentucky rand paul has thoughts on this and is with me from the hill. senator, how are you? good morning, bill. bill: what do you think is the practical affect if these cuts happen come december 31st, january 1? well, i m one of the few republicans who actually believes that we do have to look at military spending. we ve doubled military spending over the last ten years and we need to bring the top line number down. the military sequester is pretty
but we give china foreign aid, still, we give china $700,000 in economic assistance, and it is completely insane what we are doing but with regard to pakistan, president obama has it wrong. he is actually giving them an extra $1 billion. last week hillary clinton announce she found an extra $1 billion so whole we are scrambling to find out how to fund the military and people are worried about the military sequester they got an extra $1 billion to send above the $2 billion they untilally send. neil: we have addressed this for it quite a while and we and your dad has when he has been here, it is fruitless to try to buy a country s love, but i will be damned if i will put a downpayment on their him so where do we line and how do you fine who gets money? guest: we have $30 billion in foreign aid and my budget that balanced in five years we take it down to $5 billion and