> you want us to spend less on defense, and weaken our ability to protect from spies What a remarkable misrepresentation of what I wrote. I don't want us to s

> you want us to spend less on defense, and weaken our ability to protect from spies What a remarkable misrepresentation of what I wrote. I don't want us to spend less (necessarily) I want us to waste less and spend effectively. If you aren't just trolling and really don't understand that, then I'm honestly surprised you successfully found and clicked the reply button. And since your reading comprehension is so bad, the $200k is not their pay, their pay is likely around $60-90k/year. The $200k was total cost to keep someone sitting in a desk producing nothing for a year, and a lowball. Quite frequently what happens, in high COL areas especially, they sit there for a year, get a Secret or TS clearance, and then bounce to a contractor for 2-4x the pay. US tax payers get nothing for it, but got to spend at least $60k on salary, another $30k on benefits, another $30-50k in other overhead, and $50k or more on the security clearance process itself. And in the end the position the person was hired for is vacant, has to be filled again, and the process repeats. This is not effective, it is not efficient, it's just wasteful.