Will the tea tempest storm the Pentagon?

Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | 11/4/10 | Christopher Preble & Jon Samples

[Bokababe]

The mere prospect that the incoming congressional class will cut military spending has some Beltway insiders manning the ramparts. Last month, Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, and Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation joined forces in a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that military spending "is neither the true source of our fiscal woes, nor an appropriate target for indiscriminate budget-slashing in a still-dangerous world".....

[Bokababe]

Tea Partyers are making the Neocons nervous.

[ClearCase_guy]

I strongly support defense. I can think of many, many areas that are more deserving of budget cuts.

But the fact is that we need cuts everywhere. Defense cuts are coming whether we like it or not. It's just bad politics for the Republicans to demand budget cuts -- just so long as our pet projects don't get cut. That will just guarantee that nothing gets cut.

We need targetted cuts on both sides of the aisle. They want to cut $50B from defense? Okay -- we want $50B cut from education. What? Is that untouchable???? How about Energy? How about NPR? Let's all share the pain.

[Ruth C]

The Defense Budget is filled with earmarks just like all the others. Those could be cut. For example, why is it necessary to have money in the Defense budget for Breast Cancer Research? Hit those items which shouldn’t be there anyway!

[cake_crumb]

Clueless headline. Obama’s Porkulus package cost more than the Iraq war. The wars are winding down. Military spending will naturally be cut, unless Obama’s idiocy gets us into another war. Politicians IN BOTH PARTIES (duh) who attempt quid pro quo pork packs in hidden earmarks (i call them pigs’ ears) may join Nancy Pelosi at the tea table to sing “A Very Merry Unbirthday” along with the rest of the political delusionists. JSYK, it was the Indies that did the leftists in.

[TheRiverNile]

No audit, no money.

I'm a big proponent of a strong defense. However, the DOD is still refusing to be audited by the GAO as mandated by the law enacted by the Republican Revolution (of 1994) Congress. They do this by citing national security. If what's going on is so bad that they can't give any GAO auditors security clearance, you've really go to wonder what's hiding in the closets. I'm guessing that they're refusal is not because they're buying rifles.

[ClearCase_guy]

Absolutely. It seems to me that the essence of the Tea Party movement is that we need spending cuts. Republicans should not be shy about agreeing to cuts.

What we need, I think, is a quid pro quo: You cut $50B, I'll cut $50B. You target Defense? Let me choose where in Defense. I'm targetting Education, but I'll let you choose where in Education.

Make it a joint effort so that it's really bipartisan.

Now, I suspect that the Democrats won't want to have anything to do with this method -- and they should be beaten about the head and shoulders with a giant stick over their refusal to engage in a bipartisan effort at cutting spending. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

[Mr Rogers]

The military budget is 19-23% of spending, depending on what you call defense.

Medicare is 19%. Social Security is 20%.

“They want to cut $50B from defense? Okay — we want $50B cut from education.”

More like, “You want to cut 50B from Defense? OK. Also 50B from social security, 50B from Medicare, 50B from other non-discretionary spending and 50B from discretionary spending.

NOW defense would be taking an across the board cut. However, defense is more important than SS, Medicare and other department spending.

[ClearCase_guy]

I agree with that. That's probably a smarter way to go. But my point is that each political party wants to wrap their arms about large parts of the budget and say "Can't touch this!" We will never get anywhere if the public perceives that the Republicans are joining in that game. The Democrats, of course, can play that game and be shielded by the media.

Republicans need to be seen as very open to all kinds of budget cuts. Now, we should not give away the store and do something stupid -- but let's not fool ourselves: cuts are coming and everyone is going to feel the pain. Let the public know that we are participating.

[T-Bird45]

Rather than tit for tat as you guys propose how about we require the appropriation bills to cite the Constitutional authority for funding a particular endeavor? There is no doubt that true Defense appropriations can meet muster but it starts to get interesting when you consider education, welfare/entitlements, etc.

[ClearCase_guy]

Oh, I'm a huge supporter of that. I want every piece of legislation to explicitly state where in the Constitution the federal government is granted to authority to take the proposed action.

My belief is that the primary task of the Supreme Court should be to look at those explicit declarations and say either, "Yes, the government can fund this" or "No, this is a bogus claim. The Constituion has no provision for the federal government to involve itself in the field of Education. Denied."

[Bokababe]

Freedom Ping!

[Bokababe]

I also believe in a strong defense, but that does not mean that we throw buckets of money into a pool called “military defense” and ask for no accountability for it. That isn’t just dangerous, it’s stupid.

[Mr Rogers]

Right now, we spend nearly 2 dollars for every dollar coming in. That suggests we need cuts of at least 40%, including cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

The truth is right now, Americans wouldn’t put up with it. We’ve figured out we like to eat from the pig trough, and we don’t care what it takes. If a conservative is serious, he needs to look at significant cuts in SS & Medicare and welfare and school ‘loans’ and all the other untouchable, dearly loved vote-buying dollars.

If we totally eliminated the Defense Department twice over, we wouldn’t have a balanced budget.

[ClearCase_guy]

Like Cato the Elder, who ended every speech in the Roman senate, no matter what the primary topic was, with the closing statement "And Carthage must be destroyed", the Republicans should just say that "Social Security and Medicare are bankrupting this country and we need to address that issue."

Say it on TV about 5000 times in the next two years.

If George Bush had spent his last term talking about Fannie and Freddie and the Real estate crisis, saying: "Barney Frank says real estate loans are fine, but I say they will implode and plunge this country into a deep recession" -- if Bush had said that about 5000 times, I don't think we'd be hearing quite so much about Obama "inheriting a problem".

Social Security and Medicare are problems. Say it loud. Say it often.

[MaggieCarta]

I also believe in a strong defense, but that does not mean that we throw buckets of money into a pool called “military defense” and ask for no accountability for it. That isn’t just dangerous, it’s stupid.

I agree. There is probably quite a lot that does not belong in the military budget.

[Bokababe]

Social Security and Medicare are problems. Say it loud. Say it often.

I agree, but the hard part with these programs is that you have many people on them who are too old to work and adjust to this new reality that they will have to pay for everything. They are stuck -- unable to pay for themselves now.

The first things that I would do with Social Security is to get everyone off of it who didn't pay into it. You've got old people from every country around the world who come here and immediately start collecting Social Security checks, even if they never paid a penny into it. You've got drug addicts who are collecting Social Security checks because they are qualified as "disabled". That's BS. I don't know what the proportion of those in these categories are, but I'd dump them and quick because they are the easiest targets that no one would give a crap about -- and that would be a beginning to "doing something".

[Doe Eyes]

Right now, we spend nearly 2 dollars for every dollar coming in. That suggests we need cuts of at least 40%, including cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

Not for Social Security. Its about one for one.

[ClearCase_guy]

Sure. The devil is in the details and it's all about the implementation.

I would wager that a lot of Americans believe there is a lockbox, that is overflowing with billions of dollars which have been collected from your paychecks, and set aside (just for you) and that your retirement will be funded by periodic withdrawals from this enormous fund.

Well, people need to know that there is nothing there. It's empty, it's been empty for a long time. It's bankrupting us. Say it loud. Say it often.

Now, if we have people's attention, we start talking about the group of people who deserve to still have a retirement funded by the government (you can't just yank this stuff away from all the old people) and the group of people who just aren't going to get anything out of it (30 years old? Paid into social security for 10 years? Sorry. Got nothing for you.)

Hash out those details over time -- but people need to realize that trillion dollar deficits are not sustainable, and, No, cutting funding for Afghanistan isn't going to magically solve our budget woes.

Republicans, in my opinion, do a poor job of hammering on this stuff.

[Bokababe]

"Hash out those details over time -- but people need to realize that trillion dollar deficits are not sustainable, and, No, cutting funding for Afghanistan isn't going to magically solve our budget woes. Republicans, in my opinion, do a poor job of hammering on this stuff.

Because Republicans are always the ones who are the bearers of bad news.

No one is talking about "cutting funds from Afghanistan", but when you hear about the $Billions getting lost in Iraq and no one seems to lose sleep about it, I have to imagine that the Pentagon has a lot of waste, too -- that has nothing to do with weakening our position in Afghanistan.