Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Posted on 02/15/2011 1:33:47 PM PST by americanophile
Will this be the year that Congress takes after the defense budget, seeing it not as holy writ laid down by an unchallengeable priesthood but rather as a political document hammered out by competing bureaucracies, each with long-standing vested interests? It's a bubbling brew out there, the Tea Party Republicans keen to slash any and all federal programs, joined in a potential alliance of convenience with liberal Democrats seeking to kill big-ticket weapons slammed as pork-barrel waste or Cold War antiques.
The Obama administration's proposed defense budget for fiscal year 2012, rolled out Monday afternoon by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, makes for a gigantic target on this shooting range.
All told, it amounts to $702.8 billion, broken down as follows: $553 billion for the baseline discretionary Defense Department budget, $5 billion for a handful of mandatory programs, $117.8 billion for the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and—a category usually omitted in these sorts of analyses but clearly laid out in the tables of the White House budget office—$27 billion for "defense-related" programs in other federal departments, nearly half of it for nuclear-weapons labs, reactors, and warhead maintenance in the Department of Energy.
The money to fight the wars is probably untouchable. First, as a result of the troop pullout from Iraq, it's a lot less money than the $160 billion funded last year. Second, as was the case last year, Gates is straightforward in itemizing these war-fighting costs ($80 billion for the troops and supplies, $10 billion for equipment to counter roadside bombs, $12 billion to repair and replace equipment, etc.). This is a refreshing contrast to his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, who offered no elaboration and stuffed several non-war-related programs into the account to make the baseline budget seem smaller.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
yes we need them
Of course not...we need more peace signs, flowers and fluffy rabbits to throw at our enemies.
Hmm, lemme think on this a minute....
YES!
... if they will be used against US citizens’ enemies and not on US citizens...
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Mine are all here:
Move down the page a bit to the graphs. I can find a nearly a trillion that can be saved RIGHT NOW!
And HUGS, more hugs ...
You can never have too much of anything.
DemoGenerates just can’t wait to be slaves again...Put in Concentration Camps, and eventually plowed into mass graves again...How else can they prove themselves to be “good”?
They all suffer with Death Camp Victim Envy.
If it ever hits the fan with China or Russia, we’ll wish we had more of both, but especially submarines.
>> Comments?
We need to build plenty of submarines and aircraft carriers.
We also need a moratorium on bleeding-heart Slate liberals.
Agreed sir.
STS2/SS (SSN 724)
Most certainly.
And we need less welfare for folks who are here illegally, no NPR, no relief for idiot liberal states who are bankrupt, and total rejection of any govt backed retirement for the UAW and other toads.
And that’s the truth.
After all, the former guarantees a 100% ROI.
I think Joe Biden would answer the question with two words, "China."
Yes, and we need to tax liberals at twice the rate of patriots to pay for them.
War is coming. We’re going to need more of everything.
Thats the one thing federal government is supposed to do. Cut everywhere else.
Will this still be true if we get a conservative POTUS and the middle east comes unglued? Won't most of the fighting be more traditional, meaning one country invading another with tanks and troops and aircraft, etc?
I’ll let this man speak for me:
“This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?! U.S. forces armed with what — spitballs?!”
- Zell Miller, referring to John Kerry, at the 2004 Republican National Convention
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