Quote:
Originally Posted by Snake Doctor
Earlier you said "the 700 billion is foreign aid"
You do realize that our foreign aid budget is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 billion per year. (50 billion if you count pentagon "peacekeeping" work as foreign aid)
The 700 billion referred to in the T Boone Pickens ads is the amount we spend on imported energy......which is why I said earlier that we wouldn't get 700 billion to put into our schools or anything else if we were energy independent.
We would be spending that money with U.S. companies instead of foreign ones, and there's benefits to that of course, but it's not going to improve our schools. Two different things.
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You're right, his exact words were "We're going to stop sending 700 billion/year to countries that don't like us very much" and I'm lumping everything into that number and I shouldn't be because it clouds the issue.
But, you bet, I do consider peacekeeping costs as foreign aid. I also include disaster relief, current loans, and past forgiven debt's as well. Any time my dollar goes to a foreign country and neither a good nor service is purchased, it's foreign aid. That is the money I'm talking about pumping into our school systems - unrelated to energy consumption costs.
You're right, the money we spend on energy consumption would benefit the American workers which, indirectly would help create a new tax base for other things, not just schools.
I'm talking oranges and the way I worded it, one could infer I'm talking about apples and I see that now. I'm sitting here wondering why people thought I was talking about energy consumption costs when I wasn't.
