Carol Ross Schools Mike Stagg On Budgetary Issues

A discussion about the protesting over the burning of copies of the Koran in Afghanistan two days ago lead two "Winging It Wednesday" panelists to argue over the billions of dollars spent funding wars.

Mike Stagg was speaking about the Koran burning issue, but then detoured into his belief that we should not be fighting a war there at all.  Stagg blamed the war there and other U-S military involvement across the globe for the huge budget problems currently in America.  Carol Ross wouldn't stand for it.  She claims defense spending is not the reason for a huge budget.

Mike Stagg says, "We're going bankrupt primarily because of the trillions of dollars we spent in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Carol interrupts him, "Not true...not true..that's not why we are going bankrupt".

Mike adds, " off the budget for a decade, we've been there for a decade, and we need to get out of there, that's not doing us any good.  There's never been a successful occupation of afghanistan."

Carol finishes the discussion off with, "The defense spending is dwarfed by the entitlements we need to reform."

Winging It Wednesday panelists talked about Afghanistan, gas prices, and the latest bailout in Greece.  The basis for the topics were these headlines:

• More than two-thousand Afghans are showing their outrage outside the main U.S. military base in their country. Afghan officials say they're protesting a report that foreign troops had improperly disposed of copies of the Koran. Earlier, General John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force offered his "sincere apologies" for what happened.
• Gas prices just keep climbing. So is that a legitimate campaign issue? They're above four dollars a gallon in some parts of the country. Triple A says the national average hit three-57 yesterday. That's up from the three-17 motorists were paying a year ago. Experts warn the current price at the pump will likely seem cheap by Memorial Day.
• Greece will be getting another bailout from European finance ministers to avert default. Finance ministers worked into the night in Brussels over the details of the second bailout for Greece worth 130-billion euros, or more than 170-billion dollars. Italy's prime minister says private bondholders agreed to take a larger write-off on their Greek debt following what he described as "intense negotiations."