What’s in a name? $$
Plenty. Especially if the name is “Department of War”.
Depending on whose expert you choose to believe, the cost to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War varies only by how ridiculous a claim they make.
President Donald Trump is changing the Pentagon to the Department of War and it could cost taxpayers over $1 billion. Independent
That was an early guesstimate. A more updated one is:
Officially changing the Department of Defense to the Department of War can only be done by Congress and would require updating thousands of signs, rewriting digital code and creating new letterheads, placards and badges.
President Donald Trump’s directive to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War could cost as much as $2 billion, according to six people with knowledge of the potential cost.
The name change, which must be approved by Congress, would require replacing thousands of signs, placards, letterheads and badges, as well as any other items at U.S. military sites around the world that feature the Department of Defense name, according to two senior Republican congressional staffers, two senior Democratic congressional staffers and two other people briefed on the potential cost.NBC News
When asked how much the name change would cost, Trump told reporters Friday, “Not a lot. We know how to rebrand without going crazy.” Independent
He must not be referring to the $62,000,000 it is estimated was spent on renaming a bunch of posts to names like Cvazos, Freedom, Moore, which given that prices have increased since then could probably be significantly higher to revert to Hood, Benning, Bragg, et al. Or the amount of software changes, coding, etc. the government would have to do to get every reference to the Department of Defense changed. Maybe, since it is clearly a vanity project, Mr. Trump would like to pay for it out of pocket?
Note that key phrase above “which must be approved by Congress.” It isn’t officially the Department of War till they say it is – and you know how much time and money they will piss away spend trying to get THAT done.
Sorry – by now all the renaming and rerenaming just comes across as a boondoggle for no good reason.
Although, at least one thing costing the government more money is deserved, and worthwhile.
The United States’ highest heroes will reap the benefits from Monetary Enhancement for Distinguished Active Legends, or MEDAL Act, approved by Congress and signed Monday by President Donald Trump. It creates a new formula that increases monthly payments from $1,489.73 to $5,625. Annually, that equates to roughly $67,500 in annual honorarium—about a four-fold increase from the current annual special pension of $16,880.76.
MSG Earl Plumlee, a Medal of Honor recipient, told Military.com the enhanced pension acknowledges decades of unpaid service from recipients who never walked away from the public role the medal brings.Military.com
The REAL MSG Plumlee
If we’re gonna throw money around, I can’t think of a better group to throw some at.
There are 63 living Medal awardees per the article.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Donald Trump
More than worth every penny of it.
Seems to me that Purple Hearts should come with some form of annuity above and beyond disability payments too. If you want to be novel why demand that people who bleed for our country pay federal income tax.
There should definitely be a Solemn Brotherhood of the National Defense Medal (with Skull Device to make it super cool) stipend.
One free cup of coffee per month. And I love the Skull device!
A new NDSM ribbon would look cool next to my AFEM ribbon on my duped polyester white jumper. Bring back the old cotton whites. and the members of the Brotherhood of the infamous M-1 Thumb should come out with a ribbon. which would also look cool on my white jumper….
I want more rungs for my Expert badge ladder.
This sort of reminds me of the whole issue people had with the cost of changing military working uniforms in the early 2000s. At the time people were bitching about the several million it took to develop new ones (some more successful than others (looking at you Universal Camouflage Pattern). I thought this was a laugh considering the amount of the overall government budget. It was like Bill Gates crying about a $300 suit.
Now billions ain’t nothin’, but how many billions were vacuumed up by our Somali pirates up in the cold northern wastes of the upper US? And all that DOGE found. . . I have to stifle a snort when we talk about how corrupt Ukraine is – and it is. We just, what, make it look more sophisticated when we ‘corrupt’?
Department of War for the win. I don’t care what the cost is.
I blame it on the Democrats. They started renaming bases, and now I want to rename everything just to piss them off.
And more importantly, the more shit they have to change back once they steal the White House again, the less they will mess with things that are really important.
At least we are playing offense, rather than reacting to the stupid shit they do.
About the money for awards, I guess I am ok with the MoH recipients. There is only a few anyway.
But, I warn you about the slippery slope. Don’t do that for lower awards.
Though no property taxes would be nice.
If there is a tax that feels like the government is stealing from us are the property and the inheritance taxes.
All that was taxed already!
I voted for this and I want more of it.
What do I think?
I suppose there is little harm in changing it; but the Democrats will just change it back when they are in power again. I’m sure they will change the names of the bases again, perhaps even rename Ft. Bragg to Ft. Chelsea Manning to better represent their ideals. This political ping-pong with the military time wasters and diversion of resources serves China’s interests so I expect it to continue unabated.
I do recall that Trump was also going to change the name of Veterans Day back to WWI Victory Day (which he seemed curiously unaware that it was previously called this?) but the idea appears to be stillborn as Trump reverted to the more conventional wreath laying at the ToTUS and mentioned Veteran’s Day in a a speech on November 11th.