# Convince me to vote for Kerry **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 9, 2004, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416 "2004-06-09T05:24:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![MemoryLeak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6f9a4e/32.png) [@MemoryLeak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MemoryLeak)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416/121 "2004-06-13T12:47:58Z")
> [@Brainiac4](#): > > Maybe I’m misreading this [budget data from whitehouse.gov](http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/tables.html), but it looks to me like the social programs do not “dwarf the military budget.” > > (Figures in billions) > > **2004 Enacted budget figures:** > > Homeland Security (non-Defense)…28 > Department of Defense…375 > Other Operations of Government…384 > > Then we add in the supplementals: > > Homeland Security…6 > Defense and other War on Terror…80 > Non-Defense, Non-Homeland…5 > > Total budget is 874 billion dollars, of which 455 billion is Defense. I’m leaving out Homeland Security, but including “Other War on Terror.” That’s 52% of the budget devoted to something other than social programs. Why do you leave out the mandatory outlays (~1.2 trillion)? Considering that the vast majority of this spending is for Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, these outlays change your percentage from 52% to 20%. I would characterize that as dwarfing the military budget. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416/122 "2004-06-13T14:34:33Z")
> [@MemoryLeak](#): > > Why do you leave out the mandatory outlays (~1.2 trillion)? Considering that the vast majority of this spending is for Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, these outlays change your percentage from 52% to 20%. > > I would characterize that as dwarfing the military budget. Does anyone know if these figures for the military budget include Bush’s requests/expenditures for Afghanistan and Iraq? ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416/123 "2004-06-13T18:33:04Z")
> [@MemoryLeak](#): > > Why do you leave out the mandatory outlays (~1.2 trillion)? Considering that the vast majority of this spending is for Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, these outlays change your percentage from 52% to 20%. > > I would characterize that as dwarfing the military budget. I left them out because they’re not in the budget as presented by the staff of the CBO, linked above at [whitehouse.gov](http://whitehouse.gov). As I noted, I may be misreading the figures, as I’m not terribly familiar with the accounting practices of the federal government. If the non-discretionary budget dollars do indeed add up as you indicate, then the social programs could be said to “dwarf the military budget.” I’d like to see the figures – do you have a link you could share? ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416/124 "2004-06-13T18:40:34Z")
> [@Hentor the Barbarian](#): > > Does anyone know if these figures for the military budget include Bush’s requests/expenditures for Afghanistan and Iraq? It looks to me as if they do – the figures linked include line items for “supplementals” of 87 billion dollars in 2004. However, as noted previously, I do not know federal budgeting or accounting practices. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2004, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416/125 "2004-06-14T00:08:29Z")
> [@MemoryLeak](#): > > Why do you leave out the mandatory outlays (~1.2 trillion)? Considering that the vast majority of this spending is for Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, these outlays change your percentage from 52% to 20%. Yeah…I was going to point that out too but you beat me to it. On the other hand, the figures for **discretionary spending** are important if you are going to consider spending cuts because these are the ones that can be cut most easily. [Also note that social security, which admittedly accounts for only a part of the mandatory outlays, is currently operating on a surplus…I.e., the receipts from the social security tax exceed the outlays to social security and are being used to fund other things (or reduce the deficit, depending on how you look at it).] ---
**Author:** ![MemoryLeak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6f9a4e/32.png) [@MemoryLeak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MemoryLeak)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2004, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416/126 "2004-06-14T11:40:56Z")
> [@Brainiac4](#): > > I left them out because they’re not in the budget as presented by the staff of the CBO, linked above at [whitehouse.gov](http://whitehouse.gov). As I noted, I may be misreading the figures, as I’m not terribly familiar with the accounting practices of the federal government. > > If the non-discretionary budget dollars do indeed add up as you indicate, then the social programs could be said to “dwarf the military budget.” I’d like to see the figures – do you have a link you could share? It’s on the page you provided (scroll down). ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2004, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416/127 "2004-06-14T12:27:53Z")
> [@MemoryLeak](#): > > It’s on the page you provided (scroll down). That’ll teach me to look past the summaries. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2004, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416/128 "2004-06-14T14:16:59Z")
> [@MemoryLeak](#): > > Why do you leave out the mandatory outlays (~1.2 trillion)? Considering that the vast majority of this spending is for Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, these outlays change your percentage from 52% to 20%. > > I would characterize that as dwarfing the military budget. Yep. That’s exactly what I was thinking of. Social Security, Medicare/Medicade are the massive spending in government that is most wasteful IMO. The military budget is not above 50% in any honest estimate. ---
**Author:** ![Merkwurdigliebe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/74df32/32.png) [@Merkwurdigliebe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merkwurdigliebe)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2004, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416/129 "2004-06-14T15:13:16Z")
Cardinal, I don’t really want to read much of that arguing going on back there, so I’ll just try to answer the OP and do it as you requested. I’ll take it that your issues are pretty libertarian. Although you would probably disagree with most of the views in the Democratic platform, you may have some reasons to still like him. You also may want to vote just to get rid of Bush. If that is true, vote if it is close with your nose pinched, and don’t vote for president or vote 3rd party if it isn’t close in your state. Ill start with some negatives about Bush: He is a very polarizing president. Everyone agrees with that. A lot of the polarization is occuring overseas, and I’d personally rather have a voice of moderation. He has no plan to get America independent from foreign oil. I imagine that before 911, you would have been content with a level playing field for people, and a small government, with an isolationist attitude internationaly. Reguardless of your opinion about whether we should be fighting terrorism the way we are under Bush, you have to admit that having precious oil in the mix isn’t helpful. Many of these countries hold a powerful card against us, and Bush doesn’t have any plans to get rid of it. In my personal opinion, I consider Bush to be a bad president. I don’t think that he is evil, but rather that he is willingly ignorant of many things. I have experience trying to start an Internet firm a few years back, and I knew nothing about the business world. I would ignore potential pitfalls in the plan thinking that its brilliance would be enough to make it all work. As I looked back in the end I realized that in the future its much better to take the pain (confront your doubts early) before it becomes a bigger problem. Can you remember when you, yourself were in a situation like this? This seems to be typical of the Bush administration. You mention that he seems to take bad ideas way too far. They are an ideologically close knit bunch, but the fact that they aren’t very tolerant of dissent seems to make me think that they will always be destined to making them again. Whatever my opinion of the Iraq war was, I remember thinking it was winnable after the point when Saddam didn’t fire WMD on our troops like we feared. But we have made many mistakes in the process. The torture mess is going badly and we have had other problems as well. On top of that Ashcroft is denying the investigation the documents without any sort of legal reason to do so. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-to-vote-for-kerry/249416.md?page=6)