a little tough for a little while. leaders were even confronted with a new spending target when trump tweeted that commitments must go up to four percent. but nato allies said they remained committed to a twenty fourteenth. the help of a dutch onto at least speaking for germany has made it clear that we know we have to do no harm and this change of direction started a long time ago at that. leaving the summit trump said he was happy with the tremendous progress that has been made over the two days but other leaders late did night they d caved into trump s demands. well i m joined tonight by the german marshall fund of the united states mr tesco is an author and foreign policy analyst to his work at the german defense ministry as well as with nato he had a front row seat at the nato summit in brussels mr here s how it s good to have you
justify to american citizens why some countries don t share the burden while american soldiers continue to sacrifice their lives overseas or come home gravely wounded. a senior german official points out that in afghanistan germany is the second largest contributor of foreign troops. to norway, a not so subtle reminder of norway s risks. since it remains the only nato ally sharing a border with rodriguez, that doesn t have a plan to meet the nato spending target. nato spending might be one area where there is agreement with former president obama. everybody s got to step up and everybody s got to do better. reporter: spending estimate shows the u.s. is well above the 2% spending standard at more than 3.5% of the u.s. economy going to defense. the uk is just over 2% while norway, canada and germany are all under. but trump could go too far in criticizing nato at the upcoming
including the united states and canada. all the countries act as a mutual defense body. article 5 says quote an armed attack against one or more member nations in europe or north america shall be considered an attack against them all, triggering joint defense. that provision has only ever been eninvoke the once in the organization s nearly seven decade history. that was immediately following the attacks on september 11, 2001, bringing coalition a to the u.s. effort to combat al qaeda. remember this. only time article 5 has ever been invoked has been in support of the united states. then there s the m ill tear spending target, which is a focus of the president s nato criticism. member nations are encouraged and urged to spend 2% of their gdp on defense but only five. nations actually achieve that goal.
realist manner. budget and financial matters. not necessarily an ideological predilection. i agree with you completely. before we get to stephanie cutter, we have one more chart to look at which plays into this. we sum it up, we talked about the total spending target and ways to get there and about the fact that romney has more ambitious plans for defense, so it s all got to come out of somewhere. let s look at the somewhere. this is essentially everything else. this is everything from veter veterans pensions to big bird to education to transportation. and when you do the math and take what each of these guys is saying, you put it together, this is what they propose to spend, $12 trillion from president obama, $9.3 trillion from ryan, $6.9 trillion from ryan. he s in effect proposing a 40% cut in everything from education to transportation. as i said, big bird and a lot of veterans on food stamps and all that. by the way, that s not going to happen. that s not going to happe
bill: 2008 levels. 2008 levels. that was their spending target and budgetary target because it is a prebailout level. a prestimulus level and also the preinflated budgetary baseline level. remember, the last two, two plus years this administration and the democratic congress so inflated federal spending by 25%, bill, that what the democrats and the president have been talking about is locking those levels in. okay, well, free spending but the spending levels are so inflated. fact, a lot of bureaucracies the last two years, bill, have seen increases of 30, 40 and even in some cases 100%. bill: this is what i m saying about my head blowing off. we have to simplify this thing. what do you think, holmes, about the debt commission? they want to do incredible cuts on things like medicare and medicaid. bill: you don t like that? i don t like that at all. the $184 billion added to the deficit rather because they don t want to give tax breaks to billionaires.