Posted on 11/26/2013 10:21:54 PM PST by WilliamIII
How can some policymakers claim to be fiscal conservatives when they won’t allow small spending cuts to the defense budget to go through?
We've seen that the “sky is falling” predictions about sequestration haven't materialize. Yet lawmakers in both houses of Congress are still seeking to at least partially undo the spending reductions in the Budget Control Act of 2011, despite evidence the Pentagon is wasting taxpayer dollars on overly expensive -- and arguably unnecessary -- projects.
A recent amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act by Republican Sens. James Inhofe, R-Okla., John McCain, R-Ariz., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., attempts to mitigate sequestration’s impact on the Pentagon by stretching the reductions out over the next eight years.
According to Congressional Quarterly, their amendment "would raise the cap on defense spending in fiscal 2014 from $498 billion to $524 billion and lower the annual increase in defense spending between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2021 from 2.5 percent to 1 percent, significantly below expected gross domestic product growth during the same period.”
Considering the inability of current policymakers to impose spending restraint on future congresses, trading actual cuts today for unlikely slower growth in spending tomorrow would be best described as a “dessert today, spinach tomorrow” plan.
Besides, for all the complaints about how the defense caps and sequester cuts are hurting our ability to defend the nation, there is a substantial and well-documented amount of evidence that there is a lot of waste and abuse in the Department of Defense.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
The Pentagon needs to stop defending ( and promoting ) the stupid Rules of Engagement (ROE’s) that are getting our troops killed and eliminating any possibility of VICTORY .
Dump the JAGs and defy Obama
Cutting tricare, dropping stars and stripes, and abusing the troops doesn’t cut “fraud and waste”.
The sequestration is Obama’s baby, he fought hard for it.
The cutting that is going on is in the wrong places.
I do not defend ACTUAL waste & fraud.
About 15 years ago, I read an article in the Stars and Stripes in which DoD admitted that it could not account for $20 billion in spending. It just disappeared.
One hundred years ago, the Royal Navy, the largest in the world, had one drydock. The United States Navy,the 3rd largest, had 18.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but as big of a problem as military spending waste and fraud is,the bigger problem is weapons systems they don’t need.
Are there not a lot of things the military is forced to try to use simply because they’re made in this or that congressman’s district?
I didn’t see the Tea Party flinch when the sequester was enacted. It seems to be the GOPe, with the corporate connections, who want to restore funding.
It’s the military equivalent of the “cut police and teachers first” strategy used by local pols when voters refuse to increase taxes. I have to believe the Pentagon could eliminate 10% of their desk jobs and still function.
Maybe even 35% of desk jobs.
There’s an amazing amount of duplication at that level.
Almost expect to hear the Yesmen in stereo in the hallways.
Agreed, same strategy.
Then shift what funding remains into other supposedly “necessary” things where it will never be freed up.
Then insist taxes must go up to cover what got cut.
Then cut again, demand more taxes..
All budgets need to be cut radically, including the Defense budget.
of course. it all becomes local after awhile.
But the real waste problem lies the the lap of Guess Who? Congress.
Virtually every dollar authorized and appropriated is in a budget line and can’t be spent on anything but that without going back to Congress and saying “Mother, may I?”
TC
Could have gone to the development of the SR-72...:)
Black funds and all...
Seriously, though...before a single penny of waste in defense spending is cut because it is wasteful, I would demand the same scrutiny of EVERY entitlement program.
Conservatives are like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football.
They say “We will cut spending one ***INSERT NON-LIBERAL PROGRAM HERE***, and will follow up with cuts in ***INSERT LIBERAL PROGRAM HERE***”
But the liberal program cuts never happen.
Of course, when it came time to produce for a war we had to produce for to win, those 18 dry-docks came in quite handy.
“We’ve seen that the “sky is falling” predictions about sequestration haven’t materialize.”
Without going into details, as someone who works every day in Army sustainment I think the author of this piece is full of s**t.
England covers a total of 50,346 square miles.
The State of Georgia covers 59,441 square miles.
Did that total of only one drydock include the colonies?
India, Australia, Canada, etc?
The United States has coast 2000 miles apart with no easy way to get from one side to the next.
Of course we would have more dry docks. That is a poor example of waste.
Then when a little thing called WWI showed up, which Navy was able to resupply the other?
At the end of WWII we had the most powerful military the world had ever seen, yet a few years later when the Korean war showed up, we were understaffed, under equipped, under trained. All that money “saved” ended up costing more in treasury and blood.
Better that we waste some money in the name of freedom than the slavery of the Liberal agenda.
Exactly right.
Nobody in Washington gives a fig about taxpayers except for how much money they can bleed out of us.
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