The accounting department is up on level 3 

Considering the billions invested into Apollo, 7 billion is a pretty damn good price for opening up the entire galaxy.

I love it when politicians are portrayed accurately: “why’re we spending billions of dollars a year to stop humanity’s extinction? It hasn’t gone extinct yet.”

Just tell the good senator that there are planets out there with completely untapped oil reserves. He'll want to liberate every planet from the Gould.

I forgot how well Cox played Kinsey, he was so easy to hate.

"They're really at the Gate, THAT ONE!" "Then I suggest we close it!" ...He does realize they have space ships, right?

Because if there's one thing America is known for, it's being conservative on military spending

A galaxy full of hostile alien races and somehow senator mcinley is probably one of the best villains in this show.

Take note, writers. This is how you introduce politics in Sci-Fi correctly. That isn't to say you can't tackle social issues, God knows this show did that too. But this is doing politics right. You can almost understand where Kinsey is coming from here. After all it's a lot money that "officially" is going nowhere. But we as the audience know the benefits, even if the program is a resource sink. This adds a perspective we might not have considered before.

"That was a metaphor. The "back door" is... the sky. They have ships. Good luck closing that part" Is one way the conversation could've continued.

"Then I suggest we close it." Never mind the fact that those 'barbarians' are technologically advanced aliens... with fully functional space ships...

Senator Kinsey was amazingly good at coming up with bad ideas in this series.

So I wonder what part of they have spaceships he didn't understand...

I loved it when Thor put him in his place and said”*SUPREME* commander Thor” no fear , all desire to help his friends.

You have to admire the writing of a show when it manages to make the politician wanting to reduce secretive military spending out to be the bad guy.

7 Billion? Thats ridiciously low for their overall military funding per year. The last few years it was round about 750 Billion Dollars.

In about a 10 year period of time, the Asgard gave them all their Technology. I think the stargate has paid for it's self many times over just from that. :)

"Do you KNOW how much this program costs"? "Do you know we have A GATE TO OTHER PLANETs?" How anyone could claim the SGC us a "waste of money" is something i'll never understand.

"And let me tell you something. This time there really are barbarians. They're called Go'aulds. And they really are at the gate. THAT ONE!" Great writing and delivery here. One of my favorite Jack O'Neil moments - you can really hear the fear and rage in his voice that this one self-important politician is going to doom the planet.

One of the greatest sci-fi shows in history...

I never noticed before just how good the writing was for this scene.

Calling a literal portal to other planets all over the galaxy with all their resources a waist of money

Man I never appreciated how I would start to see Kinseys pov as I got older. Got a new level of respect for the actor now.

Ironic, just about everything Kinsey said was true, just true in our universe - only in Stargate he was wrong.

I really wish I could forget all of Stargate... just so I could experience it one more time.

Sure. Let's close the gate. It's not as if they don't have ships that can invade in the conventional way. Oh way. _they _*_do_*_ have ships that they can send to conquer us!!!!!_

When I watched this the first time when I was 12 - 13 years old I thought: "7 Billion?! Damn, that is a whole lot of money for one military base" Now I think: "Pbthh... chump change for the US Military budget" In 2000 the military budget was around $301 billion, Which means that the SGC took up 2% of the budget. For the potential of acquiring alien technologies (and seeking a habitable world in-case of total world destruction), it's a damn-good bargain. Honestly, the only reason they should have brought forward for the shut-down of the program was that, especially in the early seasons, the risks were greatly outweighing the benefits.

Ya know would be amusing as hell to look at the Stargate Program's accounting department. See them shift through the no doubt insane expenditures they would likely have to deal with.

Notice how Jack says "seven..?" Rather than "a few billion..?" Or "lots..?" or something to that effect, which he might if he genuinely didnt know anything about the budget. But he's being deliberately obtuse, to deny kinseys rhetorical question. He wouldn't know it was seven something, and not that it was in the billions. Jack is actually quietly aware of precisely how much the program costs, despite it not being interesting or that relevant to his job. He just believes in the SGC and is a professional... he just refuses to show that to Kinsey becuase he doesnt consider him worthy of his attention. Its extremely well written. It implies all this about his character with one word - I love it.

it was really clever writing to. compare the "gate" to a gate of a castle of old to be defended by a hostile force

Yes, close the gate, solves everything... the equivalent of sticking your fingers into your ears and shouting LALALALA!!

Ronny Cox can walk a fine line as an actor. He has to play the hypocritical, evangelical, corrupt politician in such way that we love to hate the character - but also love the actor. Many actors cannot walk that razor's edge, but Cox pulls it off beautifully. 😎

A show so good it had me rooting for the US military. Never thought I'd see the day.

When Senator Kinsey was taken over by a Gould It was Colonel O'Neill's pleasure to kick him out the airlock .

I spend the evening watching clips from “Pentagon Wars“ and it took me a little bit to realise that this was stargate...

Ronny Cox plays a heck of a villain no matter what show he's in!!!

I wish I could be more like Pissed O’Neill when I’m in an argument

SG1 at its best is a lesson in writing, acting and wonderful characters. Our modern entertainment has fallen behind in all three areas.

I think one of the interesting points is that (considering at the time the SGC had... maybe a dozen SG teams of 4-5 members, plus call it twice as many engineers/scientists/support personnel, we'll be generous and say 50 support personnel) this black book project (aka, it's not even mentioned in the budget) cost 7 billion for 120 people, thats about 58 MILLION per person in wages, support costs and funding for things like powering the stargate per year. Compare that to the 200 thousand it supposedly costs per infantryman per year to support, that means that the stargate program was insanely expensive. Even if my estimates for the number of staff at the SGC are off by an order of magnitude, it's no shock that the government wanted to cut down on funding. And the interesting part is that there was no way to get a significant short term economic recovery from the program, any technology they backward engineered has to be drip-released to the public or risk the exposure of the program, any mines they set up off world... say they find a significant quantity of gold off world and start shipping it home, how much do you reckon they could introduce to the economy every year without crashing the price of gold? Really, the only thing I can think of for the Military high ups to get support for the program is A. The idea of holding back technology from being released to ensure the US Military's edge over other countries. B. The idea of having entire manufacturing bases off world to support the US's military, imagine in a third world war, having entire planets worth of industrial bases that your enemies cannot touch. Neither of which are particularly nice to think about.

$7 billion dollars? That's less than half of NASA's budget. And the Stargate program ins't just throwing robots at rocks.

When this episode aired in 1998, the U.S defense budget was $291 billion, which would have made SGC less than 2.6% of the entire defense budget, assuming it was even included in the defense budget and not just hidden as a rounding error of 0.44% in a $1.72 trillion federal budget.

I love how this show expresses exactly why we wouldn't and shouldn't expose such a program to the public irl. Starting with politicians, they will use their influence to install their own personnel to serve their interests like they did with general hammond. Businessmen and the private sector will use the tech to reverse engineer it or use it to sell for profit like the trust. If other governments found out then they would try to interfere with or even seize the gate program for themselves like with the chinese or even the russians. And finally the public would freak out and the media would start up mass panic instead of uniting their efforts to fight these threats. Love how this is addressed realistically in our current time. "addressed" ;)

waitwait, 7 billion a year, a year....., sounds like a bargain.

2012: I spent a career listening to Doomsayers in Uniform. Let me remind you, the Cold War is over! 2022: So, About that...

7+ billion dollars a year is actually a pretty damn good deal, even if only for the minor technological improvements SGC brought about. I mean, Naquada generators, zat guns, staff weapons. Pretty sure any govt would trade 7 Billion for just one of those

Make Stargate great again !

Given today's politics, I'd agree with the senator IF we weren't talking about a literal wormhole to other planets

The Goa'uld don't need the gate to attack Earth, they have ships, heavily armed, very fast ships that have shields.

Good one from Col O’Neill. Senator Kinsey should just go to Level 3 Accounting department and sort out the costs with them.

You can never go wrong with Ronny Cox.

For everyone saying "7billion is a steal" or "wow, a senator actually caring about reducing military spending"... it was NEVER about the budget for Kinsey, it was about control. He wanted to control the gate, or shut it down if he couldn't control it. It challenged his worldview and he didn't like that, so he fought against it.

Considering how much money that dude wasted on the ED-209 project, he shouldn’t be throwing rocks in glass houses

7 billion out of the annual budget of 766 billion is a steal for Interstellar Guerilla Warfare.

One thing I never got about the later seasons. It's said multiple times that it takes a TON of electricity to power the gate every time it opens or closes. So...why not build a permanent naquadah generator on base and use that instead to cut costs?

$7 billion. Is that it? These days that's chump change in the back pocket of the US Budget of $3.8 trillion or approximately: 0.1% of the total US Budget in 2018. I generally have about $1000 in my account absolute maximum. Would I give £1 for something completely useless. Of Course.

Praise Holy Terra that High Lord Dick Jones survived those terrible injuries from his fall in those mysterious circumstances at the end of his former career. For someone with so few cybernetics the Adeptus Mechanicus absolutely adore that guy. Whole factories worlds built without staircases in his honour. May the emperor's light continue to shine brightly upon him.

There were so many directions in storylines this show could go into with the stargate. That's exactly why this show lasted for 10 seasons.

Even if you took advanced technology, killer aliens and all that other fun stuff off the table. Lets say you were stuck with any generic desert planet. The gate is worth 7 billion a year to run, I'd like to see you fund a project on the same amount and even make it to the edge of our solar system; with a team of still living people in 0.34 seconds.

O'Neil looked real young compared to now

Gotta love Colonel O'Neill's character people should be more like him 🤣🤣🤣

The most basic flaw with Kinsey's argument is that the Gould Empire has a bunch of space fleets capable of reaching Earth and if local space around Earth is not protected they will bomb the planet from orbit back to the Stone Age and then slave the remaining population and that's is if we get lucky.

Actually... the senator makes good points. Seeing this scene years after understanding actual US politics, this feels like military propaganda, packed in an enjoyable series.

Jack O'Neill is my favorite character in this franchise.

Intergalactic travel for $7 billionish dollars is cheap.😂 🤣The accounting department should be able to explain that with a detailed spreadsheet 😁

"And I suggest you close it" That sounds just about right. No point making unnecessary work for yourself...

Captain Jellico!

It's moments like these were you notice how closely the creators of the show worked with the actual U.S. military. "Let's make a villain out of a senator who wants to cut defense spending! Make him as despicable as you can and everyone who is actually knowledgeable about things is rolling their eyes and getting frustrated about him."

Ronny Cox also played Captain Jellico in TNG. He made Counselor Troi trade her leotard for a uniform. Apparently he does well at playing temporary party pooper supervisors who come in and point out how lax things have gotten.

7 billion for waging an intergalactic war against 150 billion for policing one world. I'd say SGC deserves a medal for economical spending.

In the senators defence a lot of the threats to earth throughout the series are a direct result of SG1 dialing random planets lol

With you on the other side of it.

Considering NASA’s annual budget is 22.6 BILLION, the Stargate’s 7.4 BILLION annual budget is a bargain. The value of having access to an almost limitless amount of worlds and their technology is impossible to calculate.

7 billion? on what?! They have a few gadgets & gear for a few dozen teams, the manpower & the overhead running costs, they aren't building fucking aircraft carriers every year (at this point), hell they cant even send tanks or jets through the gate. 1 billion would be still be hard to accept per year but 7 billion? bullshit!

I'll never understand how a gate that can be rigged to run off a couple of trucks (see 1969) can cost 7 billion per year to operate. Even with staff costs, etc, 1 billion seems way more reasonable.

Kinsey is the perfect representation of our modern two-faced politicians, haranguing the military for being paranoid control freaks while simultaneously doing everything in his power to seize total control.

Wow so the entire Stargate program only cost 1% of the national defense budget

Somewhere out there is a universe where the Senator got his way, the stargate was shut down and Earth was left utterly defenseless when the Goa'uld came calling.

i've recently seen pentagon wars, on youtube and this seems to be... ummm..

That dude reminds me so much of Biden.

when a senator is against military spending is because he/she is not profiting from it.

"So...there's a gate with weaponizable bees, that turn people into more weaponizable bees...And a way to control them." "....Okay, now I'm interested."

He reminds me of Nancy Pelosi... I've read every thing I know better.. Just because you've been there and done that. doesn't mean any thing.. I've read about it.. and it's not that bad.. Thank you Nancy

Which planet did he recommend dialling?

Senator is not wrong. When you spend money, you need to see the results, not imagine them. Starship troopers had the right idea. Tell it exactly how it is, what it takes, to enlist, and "would you like to know more?"

Technically Kinsey was right. They just made him into a bad guy. Had they put a positive spin on the character, he would have made complete sense. I mean they were bringing in deadly stuff left and right. As things were going, destroying the planet was just a matter of time by something they brought back

0:33 Holy shit, it's Trump! Oh wait, my mistake... it's just Kinsey

Gotta give props to Jack, back in those days he didn't back down from the brass or civilian oversight.

Even though you might hate Senator Kinnsey, he actually made good points (but did not follow through on other fronts with the same reason, so hypocrite) but still valid and good reasons 🤷🏼‍♂️🤣

7 billion is what the pentagon finds in its couch cushions

7 billion a year for a military program is pocket change with the way our government spends. SGC must be an extremely efficient organization.

I was here looking for that scene where he said the attack would face the United States Military and Daniel was like, "Sure, we'll just upload a computer virus to their mothership"

Captain Jellico! Fancy seeing you here.

Pretty sure that at this point in the series the Gould (halfway positive that not right) do not know where earth is and if the gate was closed couldn't find it by ship yet, so the senater is actually right sealing the gate would be a good idea in the short-term. But long-term it's a bad idea because sealing the gate doesn't negate the fact there's an openly hostile Alien Force actively searching for the planet. Although that is extremely unlikely given the vastness of space the odds of it happening are not zero.

Main problem. The native barbarians are WE. Attackers are like Conquistadors and Settlers...

Fun fact: At the time this episode was made, the space shuttle cost taxpayers 4 billion dollars per month.

$7 billion for interstellar travel and exploration? Holy shit..... that's a steal my dude. An accounting rounding error

I was thinking “A senator wants to reduce military spending? Based.” Then I saw it was star gate.

What's funniest is that's actually extremely efficient, spending wise, for the benefit they're getting from it. FTL travel, spaceships, etc... yes I realize this comes from near the end of season one, right before SG-1 decides to tell Kinsey to eff off and go and save Earth no matter what people say, but still...

7 billion USD is a pretty big budgetary black hole to hide from Congress lol

Ah, yes, closing the gate. That has SURELY worked in the past.

"the cold war is over" Welcome to 2022 senator.