Should Congress increase the size of the armed forces?

If our national interest as defined in our national defense policy deems necessary...yes.

The National Defense Policy of the US:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/pol...

This document determines what size the military is and how much money we spend on defense...

Congress increased the size of the Army and the Marine Corps over the last several years. The Navy and the Air Force just completed a down sizing. All forces are about where they need to be at the moment. Though some would argue the Army is too large and the recent increase was an over reaction to Iraq. I fall in that category.

They have. The problem is with meeting its recruiting goals. They cannot afford to take less quality to do this. So, they are allowing everyone whom is qualified to join and this last year UNDER OBAMA the military made its whole entire goal for the first time in 20 years. What can I say, people trust Obama to make the right decisions and of course the economny has a lot to do with it and that is unfortunate as we should not have to have a poor mans war, but Bush and Cheney showed us why we do, they both did not go to war in Vietnam after getting dererrments and call ins from their Daddies to not go overseas. They are the ones whom make me sick, Obama did not serve and there was no war during his time.

I don't think it would be a bad idea except for one thing.

How are you going to get it paid for in the current political climate?

If you could increase the USMC by 50% to about 300,000 and the regular Army to about 800,000 do you have any idea what that would cost?

They already don't know how they (congress) are going to pay for anything......

O TRUST IF THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO DRAW PEOPLE INTO THE MILITARY THEY CAN...EVERY TIME SOMEONE SIGNS SOMETHIN I.E COLLEGE GRANTS ANY JOBS THEY SIGN THEIR NAMES ON SOMETHING THEY CANT SEE AND THATS THAT U ARE AGREEING TO JOIN THE US IF THEY NEED PEOPLE....AND RETIRED SOLDIERS AND BE CALLED BACK TO SERVICE WHENEVER THE GOVERNMENT WANTS......BUT NO MY OPINION IS TO IMPEACH OBAMAS ***..HILARY SHOULD OF WON

Yes and there should be a draft also.

Our military is an "all volunteer" system...you can't increase or decrease the amount of people who want to volunteer to join.

They will probably have to so all the unemployed can volunteer just to get a free meal and a roof over their heads.