Page 13 - Security Spending News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> it is more than we spend at peak of cold war, when ronald reagan was fighting the soviet union. john: cato, your think tank made this video that compares our military spending that that of our allies. >> every year u.s. spends -- our allies spend a quarter or less to defend themselves. we agree to pay big bucks to defend our friends, and they let us. that allows our friends to spend far more on everything else. we pick up the tab for global security spending, and our allies free ride. >> they are freeloading off of us, we're suckers? >> we are suckers. i don't blame them, if i was in their ...

Relation to legislation for universal background checks. >> well, absolutely. and much as they probably should, frankly, i mean, the sequester. i mean, you know, just last week you had james clapper of the intelligence, of dia essentially saying he was concerned about the degrading of our intelligence capabilities because of the sequester. you had the fbi saying that they were going to have to furlough every single employee for at least three weeks at some point during this period. we all understand tough choices, but as we can see now, and this week, those choices have real consequences. >> t...

We have a graph that shows this. this is the options on the table. the green line is mitt romney's idea. this is base spending. it doesn't include wars or security. if you talk about security spending, you get a larger amount of money. barack obama's proposed leveling and the see quest ration. larry, you worked on this issue for a long time. what has changed? >> what has changed, i think the late senator mcgovern pointed out. we don't have a threat, yes, we have a threat with terrorism. you are not going to win it with a lot of nuclear weapons or huge armies and navies. when you tell people, e...

>> it might be about virginia. a huge about of the virginia economy revolves around defense contractors. >> if obama is smart, he will expose that. >> you know why george bush was talking about cutting defense spending, the point the admiral made earlier. he said technology is going to substitute. he had the revolution -- >> the rumsfeld vision. >> yeah. basically, he was arguing the democrats had not supported that. i think that's what people, you know, forget. of course after 9/11 they got everything and just as bob gates said, opened up the spigot of defense spending. >> here is the broader...

Such an increase would force giant reductions, about 40%, in everything that's left. and katty kay, with libya on the front pages and sort of this growing scandal over security there, with syria in complete chaos, while we all know the defense budget needs to be cut over the next decade, it's going to be hard for the president to press that case, isn't it? >> well, yeah, except that the question is not how much money you're spending but how sbelg intelligently you're spending it. as libya has shown and joe biden tried to make the case during the course of the last debate, republicans had actua...