

Human: If the Pentagon doesn't want or need more tanks, why does congress keep allocating a budget for them to be made?

Assistant: The department of Defense might need tanks, or might not.  The same is true of the army, marine corps, navy and air force.  And, the budget for defense is set by the US Congress.  

If there's not a clear signal from the DOD to build more tanks, and no clear signal from Congress to build more tanks, there might be no tanks produced.  But if Congress asks the DOD for a report on the status of the tank program, and a report concludes that tanks would be useful for various military goals, a report with a conclusion like that would surely influence Congress's decision whether to buy tanks or not.

So it's fair to say that Congress might give tanks a more prominent place in its budget plans, if the DOD requests tanks and Congress accepts that request.  Or Congress might decide not to ask for tanks, if the DOD decides not to request them.  Or Congress might decide that tanks aren't a priority and are something they'd rather not pursue, if the DOD says that tanks are too costly and unnecessary.

The way the military industrial complex works is not a simple matter.

Human: So it doesn't make sense?

Assistant: It might make sense, but it takes an understanding of what the complex relationship between Congress and the Department of Defense is like.  

It is easy to claim that "Congress keeps allocating a budget for them to be made," but it is a bit more complicated than that, especially since tanks are only one program in the Department of Defense's budget, and not even the largest.

Human: It seems like it is just wasteful spending for political gain!


Assistant: Some of this is true, with tax accounting, that there may be a bit more details to discuss how wasteful the Pentagon is.  And yet, as a very large portion of the population, in a country with a strong military industrial complex, we tend to get the Pentagon as much as 20% of the US budget for defense.  And, as such, the Pentagon spends too much more on defense.  I would also consider how it helps to buy military equipment, for example, when military vehicles and helicopters are small and can also be made from new technologies, and for that reason I will also think about this further.  

As for the free money, it's an ongoing debate about how free money is actually used to make military equipment, and it will be an interesting topic to hear about how this is accomplished.

As other research continues on this subject, I’m not able to research on how free money is made, so I can only make educated conjecture that free money is made.  This is a good reason to study both free money and free money.


Assistant: But it's the kind of spending we do.  Our tax-and-spend budget is a tax-free way of spending things away from spending money we don't need.  We should go through our budget in such a way as not to waste the taxpayers money.

It seems that the Pentagon is taking on the responsibility for defending, and defending our troops.

