Posted on 03/01/2013 7:17:13 AM PST by pgkdan
That doesn’t add up. A 2.4% cut using only 38% of the federal budget is still only a 6.3% to those budgets being cut.
Clinton and Newty slashed the DOD budget (and only the DOD budget) in the nineties to 50% of what it was under Reagan in the eighties and also 50% of what it was in the sixties.
Meanwhile all other federal government outlays continue to balloon every year.
Your example is way off. If government workers were only getting a 2 percent raise I am sure there would not be any complaining. BUT this is the TRUE scenario....I get 1,096.00 every two weeks....After April, I will get 876.80 every two weeks. That is REALITY!!!!! So much for your ridiculous example.
And relating to social security:
Many people believe that Social Security is an “earned right.” That is, they think that because they have paid Social Security taxes, they are entitled to receive Social Security benefits. The government encourages that belief by referring to Social Security taxes as “contributions,” as in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act. However, in the 1960 case of Fleming v. Nestor, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that workers have no legally binding contractual rights to their Social Security benefits, and that those benefits can be cut or even eliminated at any time.
Nestor sued, claiming that because he had paid Social Security taxes, he had a right to Social Security benefits.
The Supreme Court disagreed, saying “To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of ‘accrued property rights’ would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever changing conditions which it demands.” The Court went on to say, “It is apparent that the non-contractual interest of an employee covered by the [Social Security] Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits is bottomed on his contractual premium payments.”
In an earlier case, Helvering v. Davis (1937), the Court had ruled that Social Security was not a contributory insurance program, saying, “The proceeds of both the employee and employer taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like any other internal revenue generally, and are not earmarked in any way.”
In other words, Social Security is not an insurance program at all. It is simply a payroll tax on one side and a welfare program on the other.
First of all, the toilet seat and hammer in question cost thousands, not hundreds of dollars.
Secondly, as I remember it, the toilet seat was for an aircraft and had to be specifically designed to fit in a space and was VERY custom. They only needed about 10 of them, so between the design work, the prototyping, etc., when divided by the 10 needed, came to thousands per seat. It wasn’t like they could go to Home Depot and put a $19.95 seat in the aircraft.
Similar with the hammer. It was a specific hammer for a specific aircraft repair. Custom made. You couldn’t get one from Sears.
“The Dept of Defense must take a 13% cut alone in this fiscal year.”
C’mon. Do we really still need 50,000 troops in Germany?
How is this paid. From who? IS it military retirement or active duty pay? If so the Sequestration law forbids cuts in pay or retirement benfits. See here
If you're a civil servant...well your employer pays you according to how much value he places on your service. For too damn long the Federal Government has been handing out goodies to it's employees at taxpayer expense. Goodies that many, many hard working tax payers...who perform functions more central to the health of our economy than any civil servant...can't afford for themselves. The country is broke and tax payers are fed up. It's time to cut federal spending. Period. Many, many of us in the private sector have seen our take home pays diminish every year since 2008.
Bull. 10 toilet seats could have been machined out of plastic...a polyolefin or polyamide or polyoxymethylene for hundreds of dollars. It would have taken a student draftsman 10 minutes to design and draw it up for machining. It's a toilet seat fer cryin' out loud!
I sell to the governemnt and the military. I almost got fired when I went off on procurement officer at Norfolk Naval Shipyard about 10 years ago when she called and told to send her $2500 worth of fiscal year end material and gave me a contract number. I told her I didn't know what "fiscal year end material' was and she told me to send anything I wanted as long as it cost exactly $2500! This shit happens ALL the time.
Some of it was really stupid like the coffee pot that was supposed to withstand a crash.
I agree that there is a lot of waste in the DOD. I can’t really talk about any other agencies. Cutting personnel hours will not solve these issues. There need to be a comprehensive reform process to address waste and duplication of efforts.
DOD is still too specialized when it comes to jobs. They have combined some career fields but there are still tons that can be combined and/or eliminated.
“However, I remember the $100 toilet seat and $200 hammer.”
I always cringe when people bring these examples up since they create a gross misunderstanding.
The toilet seat and hammer were not the same things you can go out and buy at Home Depot. They were items that had to be specially designed and manufactured to fit particular military design requirements.
Of course the military buys cheaper off the shelf stuff when it fits the requirements and milspecs but sometimes they need special design items like perhaps a toilet seat that is non-standard or a hammer that is actually custom made to do a specific job that a regular hammer cannot do. Imagine if you needed these things and they had to be specially designed and built in very limited quantities....yes the cost becomes very high per piece. It is the same way in the private sector..sometimes specialized tools and equipment are unbelievable expensive.
The toilet seat and hammer story is constantly trudged out like the military way overpaid for a seat in the mens room and a hammer to knock a couple two by fours together. In reality these were special order items that were needed when off the shelf items could not fill the requirements.
“Bull. 10 toilet seats could have been machined out of plastic...a polyolefin or polyamide or polyoxymethylene for hundreds of dollars. It would have taken a student draftsman 10 minutes to design and draw it up for machining. It’s a toilet seat fer cryin’ out loud!”
OK who would make those toilet seats ? Who would do the required drawings and at what cost to the government....NO CONTRACTOR WORKS FOR FREE. How long would it take to get them on contract and would that contract have to go out to competetive bid ? Would the losing bidder challenge ?? Is whoever making the toilet seats an approved contractor who can actually do work for the DOD ? If the toilet seats fail who is responsible for replacing them ? How much would the contractor charge to set up the tooling to turn out only a few of these toilet seats ??
For good or bad, there are many considerations that go into procurement decisions. Some of them seem stupid initially but they make sense when you look at the bigger picture.
Geez...people like you think every damned thging done for the government has to 100 extra layers of complexity added to it just because it's 'for the government'! Big friggin'deal. There's not a single successful business in this country that would ever do business the way the governemnt does.
I guess the question is why does everything have to be custom and so expensive. Why can't it be cost effective.
Answer: because it doesn't have to be.
Whenever we the taxpayers ask why things are so expensive, we are told, you don’t understand and stop asking questions. It is too complicated for us to explain to you.
That is why we have a huge debt. The foxes are watching the henhouse.
“Dude. I do this for a living!”
Yeah Dude, I do it for a living also...every day... and if you think awarding a taxpayer funded contract is as simple as you say, then you are either the smartest guy in the world or you are full of BS.
Based on my experience I have to go with the latter option.
I am not saying don’t ask questions...you just don’t like the answer.
Everyone is rightfully upset about a waste of taxpayer money and that waste does exist and needs to be gotten rid of. My issue is with people who seem to think that building a warship is as simple as remodeling their bathroom.
When you are spending taxpayer money on Government contracts, there are a whole host of issues, regulations and roadblocks that need to be taken into account. You can’t just pull out cash, make something happen and hope for the best. Advanced weapon systems are complicated...way more so than most people can imagine. The configuration and interoperability issues even on simple systems are enough to drive a person nuts. Sometimes decisions are made that do not make sense uness you have the full backstory of what, why and when.
So much for your ridiculous example
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Now that sounds like a normal response from a typical liberal - if you can’t say something constructive, ATTACK.
In my ‘ridiculous example’, is it better to ‘short’ your staff of 50 $2000 ea or just let go a couple of people go?
Naturally if you are not to be let go, ‘It isn’t fair’ BUT if you were on the to go list, the 8,000 dollar raise would be welcomed.
Apparently you are ‘unaware’ of what a ‘working example’ is.
I am sorry, but I am not privy to (nor is it any of my business) what your personal situation is, down to the penny.
Is yours an ACTUAL loss or is it projected from what Chicken Little has been spreading?
If someone says if you have 6 apples in your hand and you give someone 4 how many do you have left, A proper response could be “6 apples wouldn’t fit in my hand” but it has little to do with showing someone 6-4= 2.
The ‘point’ in general being when dealing in trillions 50 billion equally spread out through all departments is not all that bad.
I would imagine that if we ‘knocked off’ paid holidays for a bit it would be a tremendous saving.
If you can afford to ‘furlough’ people 1 day a week or month for several weeks or months, are ALL those people really necessary?
Of course you will have the moaners and groaners that can’t handle the excessive workload because someone was furloughed that day.
Remember they used to say ‘NON essential personnel’ need not report tomorrow, people would come out of the woodwork and even off sick leave to show up for work LEST someone figured non essential meant they were, in fact, not essential.
Sounds like someone trying to justify ripping off the government, read that as taxpayers, to me. I have been selling Norfolk Naval Shipyard and numerous other DOD facilities for over 20 years. And yes...their paperwork and specifications can be cumbersome. It will be easier to repeal obamacare than it is to change or revise an NSM. But that does not justify the navy’s overpaying for a $100 toilet seat. I have sailors from Special Boat details in Little Creek coming into my shop monthly with improvement ideas on parts they use and sketches for parts they’ll find useful that are quoted and sold to command Pcard carriers on the spot. Don’t tell me it can’t be done!
I hate the contract process but I have been around long enough to know that most of it actually saves the taxpayer money and protects them. I have seen poorly thought out contracts come back and bite the taxpayer in the butt on more than one occassion.
I would certainly hope that the personnel coming in and suggesting changes are authorized to do so. if not then they often can cause alot of trouble and damage down the road. Many a good piece of equipment has been ruined by someone out in the field implementing their own “good ideas” and “improvements” without considering configuration, interoperability, maintenance and sustainment issues. That is why we have engineers.
If you can afford to ‘furlough’ people 1 day a week or month for several weeks or months, are ALL those people really necessary?
I don’t know yet but we will find out. I don’t mind losing 20 percent of my pay. I just wish everyone was giving up something. It is again us vs them. The reason I am so low on my pay is because I just retired from the military and was hired as a veteran. A good amount of the federal government in DOD is prior military folks. Sure you have some that never served but a good many are Iraq and Afghanistan war vets and they are hired. I am not giving you a sob story just a little reality. Again if they would cut 20 percent on welfare and food stamps and unemployment, I would not complain a minute.
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