Official air shows like the thunderbirds and blue angels definitely cost money. Does that money "Net" a return? I think it does, but I'm not in charge of determining what money is used for what. Flyovers and such, are a different category. Many times, a flyover doesn't really cost anything, because they are usually coordinated with scheduled flying training hours. In other words, the pilots need to fly "X" amount of hours anyway, so flying over a football stadium or something similar isn't really costing.
Now; that's not to say that there's going to be a reduction in training hours in the air. I'm sure there will be some cutting back. But they can't totally eliminated training time in the air. That isn't really "Discretionary" spending. Sort of like the electric bill for your office; fuel for your vehicles; telephone bill; etc... These aren't discretionary. They are required expenditures.
I'm not dogging the president, even though some here think I am every time I bring him up. But the sequester allows quite a bit of flexibility on what money is spent on and what isn't. And the truth is; which many people are starting to learn and that it's not total doom and gloom and some would have us think; that the reduction in spending is actually just a reduction in growth. Not actual spending. In other words, our debt simply won't GROW as much as it would WITHOUT the sequester. But we're STILL growing the debt.
But there's a lot of places money can be cut back. Unfortunately, there's too many people who are using this sequester for POLITICAL Reasons and Gain. When food stamps can be ACCEPTED at a liquor store, that's a problem. The sequester for this year only requires a savings of $85 BILLION. $57 BILLION is spent on foreign aid; which is only about 1% of the budget; but that alone could take care of the majority of sequester requirements.
The bottom line is; we are $16 TRILLION dollars in debt. The sequester requires a savings of a little of $1 TRILLION dollars over a 10 year period. The amount of money in question is little to almost NOTHING. There's a lot of SCARE Tactics going on to make people believe there's going to be all this unemployment. People losing jobs. Kids not getting the education they should. Sorry; but it's all B.S. All of these things are probably going to happen, but it's not because of the sequester. It's because some in government like to SPEND, SPEND, SPEND; and their only method to get that money is to TAX, TAX, TAX.
If they truly wanted to save money; which many don't; how about NOT paying contractors for work they didn't do? How about not paying contractors twice for the SAME WORK? How about not spending $27 million on "Pottery Classes". How about HUD not giving a half million dollar grant to a company to develop pet shampoo? Or a MILLION dollar grant to study the sexual attraction of fruit flies.
The list goes on and on and on and on. Each of these sound so small, but when you realize and don't rationalize that there are HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of these types of grants and programs; you realize that there are literally BILLIONS of dollars being spent. And this isn't even getting into the waste of "Entitlement Programs".
When cuts have to come, politicians automatically gravitate to the biggest spenders. Unfortunately, out of the 4 biggest spenders; defense, social security, education, and social services, 2 of the 3 means VOTES!!! And politicians won't try and cut, reduce, or even try and find WASTE THERE. They always go after defense. Yes, I'm pissed at the White House AND at congress. Both parties; ALL the politicians.
With the amount of money we are taxed, through income, fuel, import/export, Social Security, medicare/caid, etc... We would have MORE than enough for all the required spending, if we would simply STOP spending money on all the B.S. grants and programs. See, the problem is, MOST AMERICANS don't know what the government spends their money on. If you look at the BREAK DOWN, military, social programs, education, space program, Highways, agriculture, and all the other IMPORTANT THINGS; at the bottom of the tally, there's another block that says: "ALL OTHER: 22%". That means that more than 1/5th of all the money we take in, is used for stuff that really isn't that important. But it gets votes. It get's PACs. Instead of "ALL OTHER", it should show the breakdown of the first 75-80% with important, albeit debatable expenditures, then it should show 20-25% as POLITICAL BULL SH**.