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U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Barack Obama (D-IL) today joined with Representatives John Shimkus (R-IL), Phil Hare (D-IL) and Ray LaHood (R-IL) in asking the Air Force to identify funding for the new Component Numbered Air Force (c-NAF) mission that has been proposed for the 183rd Fighter Wing in Springfield, Illinois. “We strongly urge you and the rest of the Air Force leadership to wholeheartedly support and fully fund the transformation of this Springfield-based wing into the c-NAF mission. Funding must be identified in the Future Years Defense Plan as soon as possible if the unit is to fulfill...

U.S. military planners are working on how to deal with another round of major cutbacks, in terms of budgets and manpower. This is because one of the major candidates for Commander-in-Chief (president of the United States), Barak Obama, has a video in circulation, of a short speech he gave earlier this year, about how he planned on handling the Department of Defense. His major points were; "I'm the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning; and as president, I will end it. "Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut...

Where is the outrage from the Looney-Left over the Democratic Controlled Congress passing the Iraq War Funding Bill the Prez signed today? The bill was passed a week or so ago and signed today. Ever since it's passage, I've looked on the DU website and other places trying to find some outrage at Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the Dems for funding the war into the middle of next year. Guess what I found; virtually NOTHING! Hey Dems, I thought Nancy Pelosi said her top priority would be ending this war. Whassup?

The United States Senate has approved additional funding of $162bn (£82bn) for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill includes significant extra funding for US war veterans' education and unemployment benefits. It is a victory for President Bush, and does not include any timetables for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, something Mr Bush vigorously opposed. With the new funding, the total US budget for Iraq and Afghanistan now stands at more than $800bn (£400bn). The bill allows the Pentagon to pay for US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until mid-2009. It also envisages a significant increase in college education...

My name is William W. Beach. I am the director of the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation. Mr. Chairman and members of the Joint Economic Committee, I do not present myself this morning as an expert on the battlefronts in the global war on terror. Others are here today or have testified before you who wear the badges of experts in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I, like most citizens, have my...

House passes Iraq war funds bill backed by Bush Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:14pm EDT By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved enough new money to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for another year, while abandoning attempts to set deadlines opposed by President George W. Bush for withdrawing American combat troops. By a vote of 268-155, the House approved $165.4 billion for the two wars, with most of the money going to Iraq. But lawmakers were expected to reduce that funding level to $161.8 billion in a subsequent vote in order to...

The Pentagon Gets Ready For President Obama June 9, 2008: U.S. military planners are working on how to deal with another round of major cutbacks, in terms of budgets and manpower. This is because one of the major candidates for Commander-in-Chief (president of the United States), Barak Obama, has a video in circulation, of a short speech he gave earlier this year, about how he planned on handling the Department of Defense. His major points were; "I'm the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning; and as president, I will end it. "Second, I will cut tens...

Policies they espouse now will have to adapt to political reality when either Obama or McCain gets into the White House. We'll see if Obama quits pandering to labor unions and stops threatening to weaken the North American Free Trade Agreement. We'll see if either of them comes up with realistic plans for change that the nation can afford. Croesus is not too terribly optimistic that they will. As Sherry Cooper, an insightful economist puts it: "The economy is now suffering from not only cyclical weakness, but structural problems in housing, health care, welfare, education and Social Security, while we...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Even as Democrats controlling Congress continue to struggle with a long-overdue war funding bill, they are starting work on a series of spending measures for next year that are doomed by veto promises from President Bush. The first of those 12 bills, funding agency budgets for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, would award an almost 6 percent increase to the Homeland Security Department. A House Appropriations panel approved the $39.9 billion measure unanimously on Wednesday. The measure is likely to earn a Bush veto threat for costing too much and it's unclear whether Democrats will even...

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2008 – President Bush today urged Congress to immediately pass legislation that’s urgently needed to fund military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and other important Defense Department programs. “If Congress does not act, critical accounts at the Defense Department will soon run dry,” Bush said during his weekly radio address to the nation. “At the beginning of next month, civilian employees may face temporary layoffs.” Also, if the legislation isn’t soon approved, Bush said, the department will have to terminate “a vital program that is getting potential insurgents off the streets and into jobs.” If the...

The Pentagon cannot account for nearly 15 billion dollars in payments for goods and services in Iraq, according to an internal audit which members of Congress blasted Friday as a "shocking" accountability failure. Of 8.2 billion dollars in US taxpayer-funded defense contracts reviewed by the defense department's inspector general, the Pentagon could not properly account for more than 7.7 billion dollars. The lack of accountability of the funds, intended for purchases of weapons, vehicles, construction equipment and security services, amounted to a 95 percent failure rate in basic accounting standards, according to the report. "We estimated that the army made...

The Senate approved a $194.1 billion wartime spending bill Thursday that promises a greatly expanded GI education benefit for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. The pivotal 75-22 roll call triggered a late scramble of Republicans who switched their votes as the outcome became clearly in favor of the new education benefit as well as billions more in domestic spending for the jobless and Gulf Coast states. Republicans leaders, working in the well of the chamber, first tried to hold the line below 60 votes, then 67, a veto-proof margin. But when this also collapsed, individual senators were released to vote...

The Senate has passed $165 billion to fund the war in Iraq until President Bush's successor takes over. The 70-26 vote came just minutes after a majority of Republicans voted to add tens of billions of dollars for veterans college aid and extending unemployment benefits to the war funding bill. But Bush has promised to veto the bill if it contains the domestic measures, and the president still has enough GOP support to sustain a veto. The Senate also voted 63-34 to block a Democratic plan to urge Bush to begin redeployment of combat troops and place other strings on...

In a move likely to doom billions of dollars that Democrats had sought for domestic programs, Senate leaders agreed Wednesday night to focus a funding bill on Pentagon operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but allow a vote on a huge expansion of veterans' education benefits. The Senate was slated to vote Thursday to provide $165 billion for the wars, funding those operations until the new administration takes over next year. GOP leaders were expected to try to block the amendment aimed at the GI Bill — authored by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. — to send a "clean" war funding bill...

The Navy’s next-generation destroyer is caught in a tug of war between House members who want to scuttle the newest version of the ship in favor of the old and senators who want full funding for the new one. Rep. Gene Taylor, a Blue Dog Democrat from Mississippi, and Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a Republican from Maryland, led the effort in the House Armed Services Committee to cut more than $2 billion from the appropriation request for the new DDG-1000. That’s a clear challenge to the Republican senators from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)...

And now the supplemental spending bill to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan war is going to be vetoed and the Democrats damn well know it. Gives them more talking points in the current election cycle, troops be damned. How did it get to this point? Blame Pelosi: How did Congress get itself into this gridlock? The short answer is that the speaker and majority leader placed expediency and control over regular order and transparency, and pursued a strategy that would bypass House and Senate Committee markup, thus forcing the supplemental bill through both bodies with limited debate. Instead of allowing...

U.S. House defeats $162.5 bln in new war funds Thu May 15, 2008 3:42pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday defeated legislation that would have funded the war in Iraq for another year, in a surprise move that the Senate could overturn. By a vote of 149-141, the Democrat-controlled House rejected a measure that would have given the Pentagon $162.5 billion to keep the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan running through next summer, slightly below President George W. Bush's request. A large group of anti-war House Democrats voted against the funds. That, coupled with 132...

Dem Leader: It's Not 'Practical' to Stop War-Funding Vote By Josiah Ryan CNSNews.com Staff Writer May 09, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told Cybercast News Service Thursday that he does not think it would be "practical" to stop the war in Iraq simply by not allowing a war-funding bill to come up for a vote on the House floor, something that it is within his power as Majority Leader to do. Hoyer also said that the troops in harm's way in Iraq need support from Congress. "I don't personally believe it's a practical alternative not to...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The White House again says President Bush will veto rival House and Senate Iraq funding bills, even after Democrats made spending concessions designed to win the president's signature. White House budget office director Jim Nussle said Thursday that a plan by House Democratic leaders to send Bush a bill without domestic appropriations that would bust his $108 billion request still wouldn't satisfy the president.

Democrats controlling the House plan to pass legislation this week funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year.The plan would give anti-war lawmakers a vote on nonbinding language setting the goal of withdrawing most combat troops by December 2009, said a senior House Democratic aide, though Senate Republicans have the votes to filibuster the move.The $178 billion-plus measure will also carry legislation costing $16 billion over two years to extend by six months unemployment insurance coverage for jobless people whose benefits have run out. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan would begin to receive a big boost in college...

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2008 – Office of Management and Budget officials today urged Congress to act quickly on the White House’s request for $102 billion in supplemental funding to cover military operations in the war on terror through fiscal 2008, which ends Sept. 30. If Congress doesn’t act by the Memorial Day recess on the fiscal 2008 supplemental budget request, the Defense Department may have to begin furloughing civilian employees by the end of June, OMB officials said. The White House sent a $70 billion fiscal 2009 supplemental budget request to Congress on May 2 to carry the war effort...

I am no fan of the war in Iraq, but it simply has not been a major contributor to the financial crisis and the impending recession. The high price of oil is largely the result of strong demand, notably from China and India, pressing against a limited supply. The global oil supply is growing more slowly than it could because of politics and policies in many places — Russia, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela as well as the Middle East. Fears that the turmoil in Iraq might spread have probably given a boost to oil prices, but nowhere near enough to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats in Congress, seeking to avoid a vote on funding the Iraq war during the fall campaign season, are likely to combine President Bush's two pending requests into a single bill to be voted on this spring. House Democratic aides said Thursday that Bush's $108 billion request to finance military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the Oct. 1 end of the 2008 budget year is likely to be combined with his $70 billion request to continue the war into the next president's term. "You vote one time and get the money out of the...

Posted: 04/15/08 04:31 PM [ET] All eyes will be on Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) Wednesday. The 90-year-old senator is expected to chair a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on an Iraq war spending bill and his appearance should send “an important signal” as to whether he can continue as chairman. But that’s if the hearing happens at all. At least two Democratic sources said Tuesday that Byrd’s health remained a question and that staffers have taken the extremely rare step of not officially scheduling a time for the hearing. Byrd’s spokesman, Jesse Jacobs, confirmed Tuesday that an official meeting time had...

All eyes will be on Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) Wednesday. The 90-year-old senator is expected to chair a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on an Iraq war spending bill and his appearance should send “an important signal” as to whether he can continue as chairman. But that may not happen. At least two Democratic sources said Tuesday that Byrd’s health remained a question and that staffers had taken the extremely rare step of holding off scheduling a time for the hearing. A notice finally went out at the end of the day, announcing the hearing would take place at noon on...

Iraq War Spending Deconstructed by: Malcolm A. Kline, March 31, 2008 ...Two professors have actually made an earnest, exhaustive attempt to calculate the cost of the Iraq War but they look at it as two academics who have been through the revolving door to government jobs and back again to the Ivory Tower. “Defense comes to four percent of the Gross Domestic Product [GDP] but how much has GDP increased?” Linda J. Blimes said at the Center for American Progress (CAP) last week. “We are a wealthy country and in one sense can afford it but you have to look...

The Department of Defense has awarded Bell Helicopter and partner The Boeing Co. a five-year, $10.4 billion contract to make 167 V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. The contract includes 26 CV-22 aircraft for the Air Force Special Operations Command and 141 MV-22 aircraft for the U.S. Marine Corps. The contract includes an option for additional aircraft. The fuselage for the V-22 is built by Boeing Rotorcraft Systems in Philadelphia. Bell builds components for the aircraft in Fort Worth and completes final assembly at its Military Aircraft Assembly Center in Amarillo. The V-22 is a tiltrotor aircraft with proprotors and engines installed...

Like pensions and insurance, defence is one of those subjects to which too many people only pay attention when things go wrong. You might think, in the light of the past decade, that this would have changed. But you would be sadly mistaken. Even today, even after Iraq, few mainstream MPs without an immediate personal or constituency interest in the subject turn up in the Commons for defence debates. Many politicians who are thoughtful about a range of domestic issues still pass by on the other side when the conversation gravitates to the military. In this they reflect the British...

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the U.S. military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man, Efraim Diveroli, whose vice president was a licensed masseur. With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, Fla.,...

The US Marine Corps has placed two follow-on delivery orders worth a total of $715m with BAE Systems for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. Under the new contracts, BAE Systems will build and deliver 1,024 Caiman-based Category I vehicles and 447 RG33 Category I and II vehicles (bringing the total to 3,150 Category 1 and 1,927 Category II vehicles respectively). BAE Systems anticipates that the Caiman award, worth $481.8m, will include spares and increased contractor logistic support. The RG33 order, worth $234m, involves the production of three special forces command vehicles, 51 ambulance variants and 393 RG33 Category II...

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

ST. LOUIS, March 07, 2008 -- The U.S. Air Force has completed a debriefing for The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] during which acquisition officials sought to explain why they selected a team of Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) for a contract to replace aerial refueling tankers. The debriefing on Friday came one week after the Air Force's surprising announcement that it had chosen the Northrop-EADS team over the Boeing KC-767 tanker offering. "We spent several hours with Air Force leaders, listening and probing, all in an effort to better understand the reasoning behind their...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Angry Boeing supporters are vowing revenge against Republican presidential candidate John McCain over Chicago-based Boeing's loss of a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract to the parent company of European plane maker Airbus. There are other targets for their ire - the Air Force, the defense secretary and even the entire Bush administration. But Boeing supporters in Congress are directing their wrath at McCain, the Arizona senator and nominee in waiting, for scuttling an earlier deal that would have let Boeing build the next generation of Air Force refueling tankers. Boeing now will miss out on a...

The controversy over the Pentagon decision to award a $35bn refuelling tanker contract to EADS spilled into the presidential race yesterday, when a senior Democrat suggested that John McCain, the Republican nominee, was responsible for the deal being "outsourced" to a European company.

Published: March 4, 2008 Dollars Coming Home to Roost Col. Bob Pappas (USMC, Ret.) There is an uproar over the Pentagon's award of the replacement for the aging fleet of airborne tankers to the French AIRBUS Company. It was formerly a multinational company but in 2001 reorganized into a single entity as noted below. From its website is the following information: "In 2001 Airbus became a single fully integrated company incorporated under French law as a simplified joint stock company or S.A.S. (Société par Actions Simplifiée.) The four national entities, which had previously formed the Airbus consortium transferred their Airbus-related assets to the...

The Air Force snubbed longtime partner Boeing and awarded a lucrative contract to Northrop and EADS, the European maker of the Airbus, to build a fleet of refueling aircraft. The decision stunned Boeing and elected officials in the Northwest, who immediately objected to the decision to reject the all-American option. However, officials claim that Boeing’s submission simply didn’t measure up — literally: Air Force officials offered few details about why they choose the Northrop-EADS team over Boeing since they have yet to debrief the two companies. But Air Force Gen. Arthur Lichte said the larger size was key. “More passengers,...

Q Can I ask one quick clarification, Ms. Payton? I just want to be sure that I understood this correctly. It's fair to say that the possibility of this creating jobs in the United States was not a factor in your selection process; correct? MS. PAYTON: That's correct.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Air Force decision awarding a $35 billion aircraft contract to a team including the European parent of Airbus landed like a bomb in Congress on Friday, drawing howls of protest from lawmakers aligned with the loser, America's Boeing Co. The Congressional delegation from the Seattle area said they were "outraged." Kansas Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt vowed to seek a review of the decision "at the highest levels of the Pentagon and Congress" in hopes of reversing it. Boeing has big facilities in both Seattle and Wichita, which stood to gain from the long-term project...

WASHINGTON - Air Force officials are warning that unless their budget is increased dramatically, and soon, the military's high-flying branch won't dominate the skies as it has for decades. After more than seven years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Air Force's aging jet fighters, bombers, cargo aircraft and gunships are at the breaking point, they say, and expensive, ultramodern replacements are needed fast. "What we've done is put the requirement on the table that says, 'If we're going to do the missions you're going to ask us to do, it will require this kind of investment,'" Maj. Gen....

Some online research for this article placed me on a scavenger hunt for specific dates, places and people. After what felt like the most tedious search ever, I came across a manuscript of an annual budget for the federal government, which George Washington had submitted to Congress. The most interesting feature of this document was the appropriation for what, in those less euphemistic times, was called the Department of War. For the record, it included salaries for 18 employees. That last statement has a sense of satirical humor to it, but the document reminded me that Washington, like most members...

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Much more than the oft-cited $515.4 billion. It's time for our annual game: How much is really in the U.S. military budget? As usual, it's about $200 billion more than most news stories are reporting. For the proposed fiscal year 2009 budget, which President Bush released today, the real size is not, as many news stories have reported, $515.4 billion—itself a staggering sum—but, rather, $713.1 billion. Before deconstructing this budget, let us consider just how massive it is. Even the smaller figure of $515.4 billion—which does not include money for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—is roughly equal to...

In an important exegesis on Melman’s relevance to the current American economic situation, Thomas Woods writes: “According to the US Department of Defense, during the four decades from 1947 through 1987 it used (in 1982 dollars) $7.62 trillion in capital resources. In 1985, the Department of Commerce estimated the value of the nation’s plant and equipment, and infrastructure, at just over _$7.29 trillion… The amount spent over that period could have doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing stock” (7). The fact that we did not modernise or replace our capital assets is one of the...

psychosis [sy.KO.sis] (n). “The inability to distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary. Psychosis is a term used to describe a severe mental illness. Psychotics are characterized by a variety of symptoms that most people consider abnormal. These include experiencing delusions, such as the notion that one is being persecuted or conspired against. Psychotics may see things which don't actually exist and hear Voices (i.e. God) when no one is around. They often exhibit compulsive, irrational, ritualized behavior, esp. when such behavior serves no purpose or is even harmful or disruptive to those around them. They show no...

House Democratic leaders will add nearly $4 billion for farmers to a bill funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to attract conservative Democrats concerned that the measure would wrongly constrict President Bush’s power as commander in chief. Democrats may also add money for children’s health insurance in the hope of winning the votes of Republicans such as Illinois Reps. Mark Kirk (R) and Judy Biggert (R), whose home state faces a $240 million deficit in its State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and a senior member of the Blue Dog...

WASHINGTON -- The National Defense Center for Environmental Excellence opened its doors in 1991 with a $5 million earmark from a powerful lawmaker. Operating in Johnstown, Cambria County, the privately run center has received at least $671 million worth of federal contracts and earmarks since then to research and develop pollution-abatement technology and other systems for the Defense Department. The center's researchers have examined scores of software systems and other gear, including groundwater monitoring equipment, gun cleaners and ultrasonic devices, according to its managers. They said the center had delivered nearly 500 technology products and tools to protect the environment,...

The latest estimate of the growing costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide battle against terrorism -- nearly $15 billion a month -- came last week from one of the Senate's leading proponents of a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq. "This cost of this war is approaching $15 billion a month, with the Army spending $4.2 billion of that every month," Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska), the ranking Republican on the Appropriations defense subcommittee, said in a little-noticed floor speech Dec. 18. His remarks came in support of adding $70 billion to the omnibus fiscal 2008...

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush on Wednesday signed a $555 billion bill that funds the Iraq war well into next year and keeps government agencies running through next September. Bush's signature on the massive spending bill capped a long-running battle with the Democratic-run Congress as he left boarded Air Force One to fly from his Maryland mountaintop retreat and flew to his Texas ranch here to see in the new year. Bush had deep reservations about special "earmark" spending in the bill, but signed it into law nevertheless. "The omnibus (bill) funds the government at responsible levels that the president...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2007 – After visiting some 50 countries during his first year running the Defense Department, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he’s yet to find one that doesn’t want to work with the United States. He also spoke of the importance of coalitions in advancing security around the world. “My view is that the notion that the United States … is terribly unpopular and nobody wants to work with us is just dead wrong,” Gates said during an interview yesterday with American Forces Press Service and the Pentagon Channel. “I have yet to come to visit a...