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You could cut a number of non-essential items, even if they're not the largest - the US Army is the largest employer of musicians in the country [0], and the en
by dschuler 9y ago
You could cut a number of non-essential items, even if they're not the largest - the US Army is the largest employer of musicians in the country [0], and the entire military spent at least $437M in one year on musicians in 2015 [1].
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2010/09/29/130212353/military-marching-bands https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2010/09/29/130212353/...
[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/pentagons-bands-battle-223435 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/pentagons-bands-battl...
- 18pfsmt 9y agoThat still leaves $99,563M. I'm not familiar enough with the details of the defense budget, but when looking at budgets, in general, the focus should be on line items that move the needle significantly.
- dschuler 9y agoI guess the point I was trying to make is that there is plenty of room for budget trimming - you could go straight to the budget for fighter jets or soldiers or whatever the big ticket items are, but you're going to get a lot more resistance.
- Rebelgecko 9y agoHow much of that could actually be cut? Even if you cut all the public relations type performances there's still some things you can't cut (even if you don't send buglers to funerals any more, you still need someone to show up and hit play on a boombox). Members of the military bands also do regular military stuff- I talked to a member of one of the Marine Corps bands that split his time in Iraq about 50/50 between holding his trumpet and his rifle (escorting supply convoys).