In a rebuke to Marco Rubio the other day, PolitiFact noted that, no, the U.S. is not falling behind on the major weapons-building front. Among other specifics, the Defense Department budget for 2016 shows about $2 billion budgeted this year and $2 billion next year toward the cost of a Ford class aircraft carrier. Key word: toward. Total cost: about $14 billion.
Can only wonder what Dwight Eisenhower, the only general elected president of the U.S. in the 20th century, would have thought about an 11-figure boat. He did, to be sure, leave us some clues in his Cold War “farewell address,” with those ominous references to the dangers of massive spending and “potentially corrupting influence” of the “military-industrial complex.”