Posted on 02/24/2013 7:54:16 AM PST by vbmoneyspender
But perhaps the biggest example of the Washington Monument maneuver is coming from the Defense Department, where it goes by another name. Over many decades of defense budget battles, the Pentagon has often used a tactic known as a "gold watch." It means to answer a budget cut proposal by selecting for elimination a program so important and valued -- a gold watch -- that Pentagon chiefs know political leaders will restore funding rather than go through with the cut.
So now, with sequestration approaching, the Pentagon has announced that the possibility of budget cuts has forced the Navy to delay deployment of the carrier USS Harry S. Truman to the Persian Gulf. With tensions with Iran as high as they've ever been, that would leave the U.S. with just one carrier, instead of the preferred two, in that deeply troubled region.
"Already, the threat of these cuts has forced the Navy to delay an aircraft carrier that was supposed to deploy to the Persian Gulf," Obama said at a White House appearance on Tuesday, in case anyone missed the news.
Some military analysts were immediately suspicious. "A total gold watch," said one retired general officer who asked not to be named. Military commentator and retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters called the Navy's move "ostentatious," comparing it to "Donald Trump claiming he can't afford a cab."
And Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is worried not only about the Truman decision but also the Navy's announcement that it cannot afford to refuel another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln. "I am concerned that these decisions are being made for the purpose of adding drama to the sequestration debate," Hunter wrote in a Feb. 12 letter to the Pentagon, "given the continuation of other programs that are worthy of cost-cuts or even elimination."
If a service branch wants to start off by cutting a "gold watch". I say -- fine. That gold watch is gone. You lost it. Now, let's start again immediately. Same dollar amount: new round of cuts. Do you think you can find some waste this time? Or would you like to lose another gold watch? Be aware: a third round of cuts could follow, if you insist on being an asshat.
I’ll tell you, we have people on this site screaming bloody murder about military cuts which aren’t even real cuts. They are just cuts in the amount of growth already penciled into Pentagon budgets.
We caused this by exporting US jobs.
Our tax base is shrinking, because things are made in China. Which is now the world’s leading exporter.
When our tax base is shrinking, we cannot spend as much.
BRING BACK US JOBS.
Hey, Obama is still trying to “grow the economy” by patching roads and boosting pre-school education. Somehow, I don’t see his efforts doing a whole lot to help us export more goods and create wealth in this country over the next 5 years or so. The current political establishment has no desire to restore this country.
Sequestration is a dagger to the Department of Defense.
It is reeling from a $487 Billion cut that began in 2011.
Sequestration EXEMPTS entitlements, which are the real cause of our debt and deficit.
Sequestration take 13.5% (in the middle of a Fiscal Year) from the DoD, which cannot touch military pay or most procurement dollars, and will have to eviscerate Operations and Maintenance by 30-40% in just 6 months. We have become Rome. We feed the Bread and Circus.
Do you understand?
Dems won’t because it runs contrary to their “free stuff for voters” nonsense.
But the GOP is out to lunch and absent. A small portion is sold out to the Chicoms.
The rest have been brainwashed. It is that simple.
We need American manufacturing back and we need it now.
Now.
Here is an excerpt from York's column today which you can read on FR:
By the way, Duncan Hunter is a vet and he says the Pentagon is purposefully cutting necessary spending in order to protect the Pentagon’s overall budget. Is he a liar? Or is he stupid. Try responding to the specifics of the article instead of posting pictures of soldiers hugging their kids.
I am telling the truth, and you are either a liar or a fool. Which is it?
Even if this nation were to ZERO out Defense spending (which is Constitutional vbmonspender, entitlements are not) we will be destroyed fiscally and economically.
Not to mention that it is immoral to rape the military to fund your welfare state.
Do you understand? What is your IQ or profession? I am tired of dealing with simpletons on this issue. Either you acknowledge the the fiscal facts, or get out of the way.
Sequestration is a dagger to the heart of the US military, halfway through the fiscal year. It cannot touch military pay, so it will have to gut Operations and Maintenance (O&M).
And the "takers" of this society are exempt.
I am sick and tired of the entitlement takers on this website who hide behind their keyboards to protect their Direct Deposit checks at the expense of better men and women who serve in the military.
We, as a nation, simply don’t understand the concept of OPPORTUNITY COSTS. In the business world, this concept is used with GROSS MARGIN RETURN ON INVESTMENT to make decisions. The Democrats don’t use these common-sense business practices. They use a concept known as DEMOCRAT VOTES PRODUCED BY GOVERNMENT SPENDING. The Democrats know full well that they are gambling with American lives when they cut the defense budget. They are more concerned with using the hard-earned tax dollars to buy votes. Why? What is so great about those elected jobs? Because THAT IS WHERE THE MONEY IS. The Democrats aren’t childish, misguided ideologues. They are simply thieves. And the media aids and facilitates the thieves.
In the late 1980s...we were discussing how computers would replace most workers, and how DoD would downsize within fifteen years. Instead of downsizing, we actually coordinate and plan expansions now....which doesn’t make any sense.
It took longer for me to prove to them that these were "Washington cuts", not real cuts -- when they saw that the Huffing-and-Puffing-ton Post had the same AP story that evil, biased National Review quoted, they were finally convinced. (My effort to educate them on The Ad Hominem Fallacy is in its eighth fruitless year.)
But once they saw that this fiscal year was indeed more spending than the previous year, they wondered on their own, "so why do all these people who were already employed need to be laid off? why don't they just not hire new people?"
>>It is reeling from a $487 Billion cut that began in 2011.
Baloney.
The Green Book shows the DoD's baseline budget numbers as respectively $528.2 billion for 2011, $530.6 billion for 2012 and $525.4 billion for 2013. See page 8 of the pdf link for these numbers.
With regard to future numbers, page 30 of the Congressional Budget Office's outlook for the years 2014 thru 2023 shows that the DoD's basline budget will be $518 billion in 2014 and $510 billion in 2015 and $520 billion in 2016. This means that the DoD's baseline budget will be reduced less than 1.5% if the sequester cuts go into effect. And that will only be for the year 2014. Another cut of less than 2% will go into effect in 2015. After that the DoD's baseline budget starts rising again.
That is hardly the stuff of nightmares and if the DoD can't find less than $2 in unnecessary spending to cut out of every $100 it spends for only 2 years of budgets, then it has bigger problems than the sequester cuts.
Better men and women than you were serving this nation while you were surfing porn on your computer.
BREAKING: Secretary Of Defense Announces $487 Billion In Defense Cuts
I wager that you are overweight keyboard typer that never served a day for this nation. And if you did serve, you are a nothing but a Judas.
I am the voice of sanity on a previously pro-military, pro-Conservative forum that has lost its collective mind.
Even if we zeroed out Defense spending, this is what we are left with.
Who is the hysteric now?
Sequestration will cut 30-40% from Operations and Maintence now. Today.
Military pay and most procurement dollars are exempt.
Do you understand basic math?
Try putting in actual numbers in your next post and then take up any complaints you have with the numbers in my post with the people who put the DoD’s Green Book together.
Let me spell it out for you, because I can tell you are thick.
Miliary pay is exempt from Sequestration, but Obama planned back in 2010 to cut troop strength, so that is coming. The FY2011 cuts call for 189,000 less army soldiers to begin with, and that is BEFORE the cuts.
Operations and Maintenance, which is the life blood of the military, is about to be absolutely gutted.
Don't be a jerk and try to "spin" this. Don't post crap websites that don't tell the truth about the numbers. Believe me, I know the numbers.
The takers of this country are doing just fine under Sequestration, thank you very much. Almost 2/3rds (62%) of the budget is give away programs, and they are EXEMPT from Sequestration.
Lol, man that is foolish, but to be expected from someone who supports the lefty goal of making the military more female.
Here are the 'crap' sites I am linking to and deriving my lying numbers from:
http://www.defense.gov
http://www.cbo.gov
“It cannot touch military pay, so it will have to gut Operations and Maintenance (O&M).”
All types of accounts are being cut the same amount. Only Military Pay and Wounded Warrior activities are exempt. The damage in O&M is especially hard since the political appointees failed to plan for these cuts by reducing spending rates.
Now these same political leaders are unnecessarily furloughing some defense employees.
This two things, a failure to plan and unnecessary furloughs, are designed to cause the biggest possible train wreck to maximize the pressure on Congress to raise taxes.
I know those sites - they speak towards budgets. All budgets have to project increases and adjust for inflation.
Did you ever hear of the term? Do you realize that the Department of Defense has to pay for things such as fuel?
How is the cost of that doing lately?
You are a fool. As many here on FR are. I have arrived at this epiphany only as of late, and it is amusing and distressing at the same time.
Did you serve in the US military?
I linked to the United States Department of Defense’s site. The numbers I posted are their numbers and they are not projections. The numbers are what the United States Department of Defense actually spent.
You have to be kidding me.
You sound like the wife beaters on the House Armed Services Committee that went after the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter.
First of all, BOTH political parties told the DoD that Sequestration would not happen. Do you want to Google that DugwayDuke?
Next, if the DoD had "planned" for it, Congress would have assumed it was not painless. Moreover, to the point, Congress itself said that Sequestration was painful - THAT WAS THE POINT of it all!
Now, because of Entitlement greed, this nation is about to betray the US military, and those who have given the most will endure the most pain. Everything will be affected, from health care to the troops to training and operations.
Did you? You claim to have been a United States Marine but people don't believe you.
Wow.
A Marine?
Thanks for the compliment, but I never said that here. Ever.
I am a retired Air Force officer. I was a pilot. Want to seem my medals?
I have plenty of them.
They don't mean that much. My only honor in life is being a child for Jesus Christ.
You went through Marine Corp basic training, how did you not become a marine?
It was a ‘failure to plan’. The fact that some members of both parties told someone that it would not happen does not justify a failure to follow the law and that law was quite explicit. Congress, not just a few members, said there would be a sequester when it passed the law.
“Do you want to Google that DugwayDuke?” If you were to follow your own advice and do a bit of googling, you might find that this sequestration was envisioned in 2011. Part of that budget deal said that sequestration would occur unless a ‘super committee’ found approximately $1T in cuts. That ‘super committee’ failed in 2011. IOW, this sequestration has been ‘baked in the cake’ for at least one if not two years. Claiming that someone told me it wouldn’t happen is no defense.
“Next, if the DoD had “planned” for it, Congress would have assumed it was not painless. Moreover, to the point, Congress itself said that Sequestration was painful - THAT WAS THE POINT of it all!”
Horsehockey. The only reason to forgo planning was the fact that such planning was inconsistent with the prospects for Obama’s re-election. It’s part of the official record that Panetta forbade planning until Obama was re-elected.
When Congress passes a law, DoD has no recourse but to follow the law. If DoD had planned for this, then there would have been time to reallocate funding between the various accounts.
Also, DoD is guilty of what you’re accusing Congress of doing, namely indefensible and unnecessary across the board cuts it is imposing upon itself.
BS.
You keep telling yourself that DugwayDuke. I might assuage your guilty conscious.
Joint Chiefs warn budget issues could create ‘hollow force’
This nightmare is going to cause a massive cut to Operations and Maintenance in the middle of a fiscal year, and then there are 9 more years of this - which are nothing more than a blunt knife to the US military.
Yes, this garbage has been in the fix since 2011 - even Obama the homosexual Marxist said it would not happen! Romney said it would not happen. It was envisioned to be so deep and so bad that it would not happen. Do you know what? Because of our horrible "leaders" in both parties who are such cowards that they cannot even make small adjustments to Entitlement spending for the takers of this country - it is going to happen.
We are going to punish the noble, and reward the takers.
Bake that into your cake.
I was an Air Force pilot and officer.
What is so hard to understand about that?
I was confusing you with SkyDancer.
SkyDancer is the Ex-Marine, super pilot, who is always promoting feminizing the military.
I bet you have been really baffled by my posts, sorry about that.
I’m not saying these cuts are acceptable or that they should happen. I am saying that for political reasons, this administration is making them hurt more than is necessary for it’s own political purposes.
Shoot, though, SkyPilot, many of us see the spending (certainly not just military, or perhaps not military spending at all, if you are correct) going onward and upward forever...
And we all know what will happen then: a collapse of the system, of laws, of reasonable governance, and certainly a complete collapse of our great and good military as we know it today.
How DO we make any of the cuts we need to make?
It was that whacked out, ridiculous statement which made me think of a weirdo whack case.
What a bizarre pathetic, statement, and the rest of your trollish anti-freeper stuff didn't help.
No wonder the modern officer corp is destroying the military and is responsible for so much corruption and waste and self service.
Reform Entitlements. They are 63% of all Federal spending.
You cannot balance the budget by exempting Entitlements (which sequestration does), but attacks the military (which is Constitutional by the way) with 50% of the cuts.
That is the "forumla" for sequestration.
Really?
Sequestration is such a bad idea, that in the past 6 months Boehner, Romney, Ryan, and even Obama has said as much.
But it is going to be enacted because no one has the stones to tell the "takers" in this nation they have to accept less.
If you want to know what corruption and waste is - look at entitlements.
No worries.
You are one sick and confused puppy, our officer corp must have really become degraded since my time in the military.
OK - let's step back for just a second and approach this rationally.
The US military is under a triple fiscal assault.
It began in 2011 with a $487 Billion cut over 10 years - we are now 2 years into that cut. Thousands of jobs were lost. The Army cut, the Air Force cut, the Navy cut.
The Continuing Resolution has frozen funds at last year's levels. All the BS you hear spouted by Rush about this being a "cut to the increase" is only partially correct. He is dead on with certain issues, but he is dead wrong on this one. He won't admit it when he is wrong either.
Sequestration is the final knife to the military.
It is a 13.5% cut this year.
I saw you comment about contracting. You are no fool. You told me things that I didn't know. So I know you can deal with facts.
800,000 dedicated DoD civilians just got furlough notices.
Read the above line again.
In the greatest nation on earth, we don't have enough money to pay those who go out and earn it by contributing to a Constitutional enterprise?
The administration is late to the ballgame. Obama is evil. He is a homosexual Marxist. But even a broken watch is correct twice a day. Sequestration is a horrible idea, and the ax is about to fall.
After Sequestration, A Shocking Proportion Of Government Spending Will Be On Entitlements
Do you know that seven current 4 star Generals wrote a letter to the Chairmam of the House Armed Services Committe ("Buck" McKeon R-CA) warning him of the impending disaster about to strike the military? This isn't akin to a local town threatening layoffs of police and firefighters because they can't get their way.
This is real.
To my amazement, I seem to be in a the great minority on this website stating the obvious danger to our nation that we are about to inflict on the greatest institution we have - the United States military.
The "takers" of this nation have won ansel12.
If you support this, then take a bow.
I am sick and tired of the entitlement takers on this website who hide behind their keyboards to protect their Direct Deposit checks at the expense of better men and women who serve in the military.
Idiotic, childish, and far beyond merely ignorant.
And you accuse me of being insulting?
Wow. Just wow.
Would you like a mirror?
And if I am so wrong on this issue, then I have seven current 4-star Generals who wrote a letter to the House Armed Services Committee Chairman who backs me up. Read it.
Right.
But as much as the supposed “meat-cleaver” approach of sequestration distresses and disgusts you, you are well aware of the explosion (and political destruction) awaiting any conservative who steps forth to “reform” entitlements.
It’s like someone asking how we are to achieve this miracle, and another telling him to wave a magic wand.
I simply don’t believe it can happen.
I pointed out that you insulted all freerepublic and freepers, especially retired military, disabled vets, and those of the most conservative voting age group in America, and in fact, insulted every freeper who is not currently on active duty.
I called you on it, you deserve to be insulted as an individual.
You seem disconnected from reality when it comes to freerepublic and voters and conservatism.
Really.
I have been a member here since 1998. I contribute to this website. I am a retired officer.
Sequestration is an abortion.
I am defending the military, the disabled, vets, and those who will be affected by this horrific cut.
Even the military healthcare system (TRICARE) is going to suffer great harm due to sequestration.
Sequester could leave Tricare $3B short
The great majority here on the forum are off the reservation on this one. They "want cuts" as long as it isn't aimed at them.
Those who have given the most for this nation are being sacrficed on the altar - and it is wrong.
It is immoral.
Did you read that pdf letter I posted to you?
Tell me where these seven 4 star Generals are wrong?
Unbelievable.
Obama is using this tactic to frighten anyone who wants to cut his budget. Insulting FReepers who believe in budget cuts may make sense to you, but the belief that our taxes are already high enough is hardly an entitlement mentality, nor is it evidence of a lack of respect for those who have served our country.
The only faux "insults" perceived should be the consciouses of those who need to have them pricked with reality.
What is "insulting?"
That 47 million in the nation are accepting Food Stamps, and yet we are cutting the military budget and entitlements are exempt?
That is an insult to every veteran who ever served this nation.
The GOP has betrayed the military. They are cheer leading these cuts now.
They turned their back on the military and its veterans, not the other way around.
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