It’s so easy to cut Defense
Apparently, the tea party movement doesn’t know there’s a war going on either, according to the Associated Press;
“The widely held sentiment among Tea Party Patriot members is that every item in the budget, including military spending and foreign aid, must be on the table,” said Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. “It is time to get serious about preserving the country for our posterity. The mentality that certain programs are ‘off the table’ must be taken off the table.”
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, leaders of the group FreedomWorks, recently wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial that “defense spending should not be exempt from scrutiny.”
Of course, we can’t consider cutting money for parks, and bogus spending on saving species of doomed plants, cutting the number of redundant functions of the government, doing away with useless government agencies. Let’s cut out things that government is supposed to do like defend the nation.
I guess cutting the defense budget and the veterans’ budget is politically expedient for the Republicans as well the Democrats.
Thanks to Tman for the link
Category: Military issues, Terror War, Veterans Issues
Cmon now John, there is pork in the defense budget as well as the rest of the budget.
Just one example-10 years after the shooting stopped, Kosovo is still a hostile fire zone, with the same pay and bennies as Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon doesn’t want it that way, but congressmen of the Guard units that rotate through Kosovo do. That is a couple million in pay from the Pentagon, and millions more in the tax exemption for a hostile fire zone.
Not only can there not be any sacred cows in balancing the federal budget, we have to realize that the out of control federal debt may represent a greater danger than foreign enemies.
Cutting money on bullshit like the ASU dress uniform, Navy Camo, IAR rifle,streamline a few of the MRAP vehicle programs into 1-2 Vehicles, rid the Marines of the 70K each Chopped & Channeled M151 Growler Jeep for the Osprey would be a good start.
Stop paying civvies 20 bucks an hour to mow lawns at fort hood (that what Tops shitlist is for)
Stop Paying Air Farce for sub standard housing if they get billeted in Army Barracks
Stop converting every barracks into single occupancy condos, there was nothing wrong with 2-4 man rooms in the barracks for 30 years prior.
Why do we have More General Officers now per Enlisted man with 1.5 million under arms than WWII when we has 12 Million under arms? Do we really need a One Star at natick inspecting ACU crotch bar tacking?
Some times its hard to tell which side people are on.
I’m in favor or terminating the salaries of admirals in excess of the number of ships on active duty. (Actually it seems like there ought to be about one admiral for every ten or fifteen ships or so.
I’m in favor of matching reductions in staff, quarters, cars, and barges.
I’m in favor of reducing the Naval establishment in West Virginia (just for an example).
And so on through the rest of the military establishment.
the problem with Military spending, IT’S HUGE. Easily the largest budget Item, followed by the VA. Now you need to make real and honest decisions. If you’re serious about cutting spending, cut some of these BS programs that go nowhere (Alt F-35 engine?) get rid of systems that are costing an arm and a leg to maintain (that would be the USS Enterprise. Which sucks up half of the carrier budget on the Atlantic) and we don’t need 4 SSGNs (Ohio Class Ballistic Missile subs converted to launch cruise missiles). The Army can afford to lose all that bullshit robotics they’ve been cooking up. Sadly the Air Force needs MORE C-17s and needs to replace aging C-130’s. Also needs MORE f-22’s and perhaps another platform to replace the F-15C (bomber version of the F-15) The Marines, well they’re still using shit from Vietnam. Modernization is important and its gonna be EXPENSIVE.
When you look at it, America will not be able to play super cop anymore unless someone figures out how to streamline the acquisitions process, and make it all cheaper. We need MORE not less now.
Is there savings to be found in the defense budget? Sure. Are these savings going to play a significant role in eliminating the deficit? Of course not. Entitlement spending is killing the US, not the DoD. The line that “defense spending is on the table” is a sacrificial lamb to the centrists whose votes are needed to get real spending cuts through, no more no less. Let’s just all hope they don’t toss the baby with the bath water.
>The line that “defense spending is on the table” is a sacrificial lamb to the centrists whose votes are needed to get real spending cuts through, no more no less. Let’s just all hope they don’t toss the baby with the bath water.
EXACTLY! And when it comes to actually cutting, WE are the ONLY ones that actually gets cut. And of the 18 enumerated powers of Congress, Defense is the ONLY one listed in the Constitution. Yet we act like it is the same as the welfare programs the government runs. And all the nice programs listed above aren’t what get’s cut-what gets cut is programs that directly affect personnel and Veterans.
And sorry, but we will continue to be the policemen of the world unless we start holding our NATO counterparts to their own committments. Some of them don’t spend even close what they agreed of their GDP on their budgets. We can’t even coordinate with them, because their technology is so far behind. Why? Because despite bad mouthing us, they know when push comes to shove- we will be there and we are the only one capable of being there. If we start going the way of our European counterparts on “military spending” then we will be become as toothless as they are.
I enjoy being able to agree with you melle 🙂
When Meekler isn’t doing the Tea Party Patriot thing, he’s another lawyer on them other days….
>I enjoy being able to agree with you melle
Who knew right? lol 😉
There’s definitely fat to trim in the military budget. And so long as it’s ONLY the fat–the waste, fraud, and abuse, the lard ass civilians, the useless inefficency–I’m all for it.
I’ve never seen such inefficency as I saw in Germany. There must be a thousand ways to streamline the Germany-based US Army. But that would mean that civilians might lose their jobs and that would put an end to their European vacation.
Unfortunately, I think that cutting actual fat from the budget will be opposed by the powerful lobbying force of federal workers. So don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. Expect the worse.
Folks, we are victims of our own success. A lot of those generals and admirals we looked up to for the past 10 years did a great job, and spent money like a fire hose dousing a match.
That said, the SecDef could cut the defense budget to 1/3 and still fight two campaigns, and have the worlds best military. Acounting for inflation, 20 years ago during Desert Storm we were we paying less for twice the force than we have now.
Uniformed officers and their Senior Executive counterparts lack fiscal discipline because no one wants to have a finger pointed at them for failing to support the troops. Lacking discipline opened the DOD up to cuts, and cuts to programs that are political anathema to the Democrat Party: air and missile defense.
After 911, the money flowed into Defense accounts. If you took every sailor in the fleet (Atlantic, Pacific, and through in all the sailors from NATO too), paid them, and got them all drunk, they couldn’t have spent so much dough. General Shinseki tried to stem the tide, but the generals (division and corps commanders) ignored him and did their own thing.
There are an incredible amount of waste, fraud, and abuse going on right now. The USAF’s chief of Procurement went to jail, and her replacement committed suicide. That came out of the tanker deal. There’s a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse going on under the cover of law.
The gross lack of fiscal discipline by those flag officers and their civilian counterparts means that programs focused on control of the sky will be cut, or drastically reduced. Missile defense in Europe: cut. Missile defense of American troops: cut. F-22 Raptors: reduced. F-35: reduced, delayed and therefore useless.
America fights first by gaining and maintaining total dominance of the sky. When one reviews the programs cut, or reduced since 2007, the downward trend in air superiority becomes apparent. Without air superiority, our ground and naval tactical operations become a lot more problematic, to say the least.
I’ve been very outspoken is saying that the only folks who should be permitted to join the military are single folks with NO dependents. Dependent care is a HUGE part of the military budget, and a royal pain in the ass to many a commanding officer or senior enlisted.
If you choose to get married while in the military, all fine and good, best of luck, yadda yadda yadda. However, you get NO extra pay or allowances, NO healthcare for the wife and kids, etc.
I know that sort of thing makes me very unpopular with many, but that’s how I see things.
Oh, and an initial cut of 50% across the board of ALL GOFO’s would be a good start.
I’d also like to see civilian Federal Workers pay be matched to those of the military, and NO higher.
Get us the hell out of the Balkans. That ought to be Europe’s problem, not ours.
Pull out 90% of our forces from Europe too.
Eliminate the Air Force and merge it’s functions with those of the Army and Navy.
Just a few ideas….. 😉
“I’d also like to see civilian Federal Workers pay be matched to those of the military, and NO higher”. Tim, I mentioned that a while back, give the civilians at pay scale, oh, like, GS-1 through GS-9. Same pay rate as the military pay scale. And, I agree, let Europe baby-sit Kosovo.
Cut the Admirals and Generals, how many of each does the military really need?
As for Meckler, which elections did he win, and what state does he represent. Maybe he might think of himself as a “Tea Party Patriot” but he really ought to go read the Constitution and figure out what, exactly, the government is supposed to do.
To be fair; the proposal from the “tea party” is that the defense budget shouldn’t be “off the table”. That’s far different than saying that they want just the defense budget cut. NotSoOldMarine is right; entitlement programs expenditures far outshadow defense budgets, yet no one wants to consider that. The percentage of the budets that goes to defense is roughly 18%, that leaves 80%+ on other things. Let’s look at them as well. I will even say this; Algore was right when he was pointing out procurment procedures within the military where a claw hammer was a couple hundred bucks. Now, as someone who worked in the defense industry, I can tell you why that claw hammer cost a couple hundred……traceability. Everything had to be traceable, from the lot number of the steel used for the head, to the composition of materials to make the handle. I worked in areospace and if you wanted to change the size of a label, the ECO (engineering change order) was 6 inches thick and took 6 months to get signed off. That was what the government required. Everything has to be documented, period, and that is the way it is. Everyone thinks that it’s like a normal business, in the gummint contractor world, but it’s slow, tedious, thorough, and very expensive to make the simplest change to anything. If you wanted to change the color of the rails on the F-35 ejection seat, to make it cheaper; it would probably take 6 months to a year and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Do I think that we could save a lot of money by going down to Lowes to buy the hammers? Yep, we sure could. Could we save a bundle by buying COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) tools and equipment? Oh yeah, but until the gummint gets on board with it, the present expensive, slow way is what we get. Defense procurment is no different than any other government agency; bloated, inefficient, and S-L-O. So, we need to do the same with the entitlement programs and with government, itself, if we… Read more »
…the problem with Military spending, IT’S HUGE. Easily the largest budget Item, followed by the VA.
Sorry, Doc–not even close. VA and Defense COMBINED account for less than 18 percent of the federal budget. “Human services” spending such as SS, Medicare/Medicaid, etc., now accounts for nearly 65 percent of the federal budget.
Yup–for every one dollar we spend on defense, we spend nearly $3.50 for shit that was never mandated by the Constitution under Article I, Section 8.
I can’t defend all Federal Workers but when I went to work for DOD from VA I made the same as Lt.Col. When I retired 16 Years later, even with my step increases, I was making just under my buddy who was a Navy Lt. and just above a Marine 1st Lt. (that includes BAH etc.) That’s a good example of how much the military pay and benefits increased, all something I fully supported.
I also have witnessed, even in retirement as my wife still works on PI, how much money is being wasted hiring way too many people, with advanced degrees that are not needed for the work they do, in MCCS. They have quadrupled the amount of people in some of these programs, like Family Advocacy, but there has been no significant increase in spouse and child abuse. I had one Victim Advocate at a GS 7, no degree required, to serve the Air Station and the Hospital, and one to serve MCRD. Now, all Victim Advocates are GS 11’s and are required to have advanced degrees. I think there are at least 6 of them now. Ridiculous. These are some of the things they need to look at….but as soon as they do, watch the hue and cry and everytime there is a domestic violence case on base the media will make it a headline.
Honor and Courage
The civilian Position Descriptions require updating. I couldn’t land a job in DA because I don’t do punch cards. Who in heck uses punch cards these days?
The folks who hire follow rules blindly. They do a word search, and if there’s “punch cards” in the resume, out ya go! Same goes for educational experience: 25+ years experience in a field is of less value than a bachelor’s degree with 0- years of experience.
For my idea: start paying retirement at 60, for everone who’s not medically retired, or otherwise deemed unemployable due to disability. If 60 is good enough for the Reserves and Guard, it’s good enough for the Regulars.
To hear of people wanting to cut the DOD budget sickens me when compared to other items in the Federal budget. I’m sorry but we should not be giving money to “artists” who use feces (i.e. shit) as their medium when creating “art”. We’ve got F15 so old that they are falling apart in mid-flight (Missouri Air Guard) yet we can slash the F22 production. We’ve got self-propelled artillery that has a design that dates to the early 60s (M109 series) with no new production systems in how many years? Yet, we can send $80 million to help save salmon in Washington and Oregon (The Omnibus Federal Spending Bill, Fall-2010). We can use the same basic design of infantry rifle (M16 series) which originally dates to the early 60s having cut every replacement design in development yet we can pay money to immigrants to go to college or only charge them in-state tuition and have the government pick up the rest of the tab?
Yes, I can agree that there is wasteful spending in the military. I never could fathom why things like cooks and groundskeeping was ever farmed out to “civilian contractors”. But the MSM seems to always scream bloody murder about the expensive “toys” (Their words) that are what the military is really about. After all, isn’t the main purpose of an M1, F22 or Arleigh Burke class DDG to make sure that the grunt on the ground can put metal on target in a rapid and lethal manner to destroy the enemy? The purpose of the military isn’t as some grand social experiment to make the world a more touchy-feely place. The sooner people realize that, IMO, the better as they’ll stop sticking their noses where they have no business.
If 60 is good enough for the Reserves and Guard, it’s good enough for the Regulars.
You ever considered AD until you’re 60? Ever seen what 14-16 years of sea duty does to a CPO on a submarine? Or a senior NCO in an infantry unit? And what of high-year tenure?
Even holding off on paying retirement until the member reaches age 60 can mean upwards of 20 years of waiting for something that the government may never deliver on–hell, look at the shit retirees and other eligible vets are taking over TRICARE, etc. Yeah, that’s working out real well.
And frankly, if you’re ACDUTRA or recalled to AD while in the Guard/Reserves, you deserve equal time credit. Some of these guys have been pulling as much weight as their AD counterparts and are pushing 20 years of total service, but even they’ll have to wait–hardly fair.
If you are going on the assumption that the cuts will be done in a totally logical and rational manner, you are bound to be sorely disappointed. While what we have for a government now is better than it was about a month ago, it has only improved somewhat, it has hot become intelligent or particularly rational or possessing of any particular level of balls.
I am an accountant,and I could go through the federal budget and find funds that are pork in almost every area. The system lent itself towards that sort of abuse. And the congress critters took full advantage of it.
As others said, the military could be pared down a bit, such as in the area of proficiency pay. Really this is not necessary. In the Marines, we were expected to do a perfect job. Rarely happened, but it was expected nonetheless. Paying someone for doing their job the best they can is not valid, practical or necessary.
I also live right outside an Air Force Base In Missouri. The amount of fraud, waste, and abuse on that base alone is incredible. Military funding should be prioritized on who is actually doing the fighting, and it ain’t the Air Force.
#19 NHSparky: the average age on our embedded training teams in Afghanistan was 45. SGM hit 60 halfway through, so yes – not only can I imagine it, I’ve seen it.
That’s beside the point: I was making a point for equity. Lots of folks talk big about every component being part of the family, but when it comes time carve up that turkey full of benefits, we know who sits at the children’s table.
Put retirement pay on the table. Most folks upon retirement have skills, experience, and education (or the ability to get a formal degree) and head out into the workplace. Very few joes simply retire-retire. If you are working, then you aren’t dependent on the retirement check. If they can wait 20 years, then they should do so.
Retirement pay, benefits, and the VA are the military’s biggest sacred cows. Keeping them off the table of negotiations only guarantees those cows will get butchered by folks who truly could not care less.
>You ever considered AD until you’re 60? Ever seen what 14-16 years of sea duty does to a CPO on a submarine? Or a senior NCO in an infantry unit? And what of high-year tenure
Check– And Dave, Do you know what the constant vibrations of helicopter do to a pilot’s back? My husband joined in 91.. When active duty troops were doing their “one weekend a month” during the Clinton years— there was Bosnia, Kosovo, Korea, Haiti, Honduras, Egypt etc. in active duty.
Yes, I know that reserves and the guard are being utilized now, but that wasn’t always the case- and it won’t always be the case again.
>When active duty troops were doing their “one weekend a month”
Correction: When reserve and guards were doing their “one weekend a month”
one thing that truly pisses me off is that none of this is the ground level troop’s fault. The F-35 program was horribly run. The F-22 is awesome but came at a time when short sighted politicians don’t see how much its needed. Hell the Osprey is a great example of fraud waste and abuse in a system that WORKED!!! Has anyone told congress that we haven’t produced a single new M-1 (A-1 or A-2) since the mid 90’s? now consider that 24 in EFP plates and RPG-29’s pop them like hot soda tops. or how about replacing the M-2 which is getting creamed by IEDs? Or the Stryker. That was supposed to be a transition vehicle.
Now add in that you literally have JSOC going EVERYWHERE and fighting or advising half the freaking world, and the problems are not getting smaller.
I’d have to agree with NH. I did six and it took a horrible toll on my body. We literally fall apart. I would advise anyone who looks at messing with retirement to look at an e-7 that does 20. I’ve known a few, and trust me when i say the Combat arms type are as broke dick as they come. we need the retirement to be what it is because we have such extensive medical problems. because we literally have sacrificed some of the best years of our life to this nation. Quite frankly as less than one half of one percent of the population that is asked (and required) to do so much for so many I don’t think we ask a lot.
>I’d have to agree with NH. I did six and it took a horrible toll on my body. We literally fall apart. I would advise anyone who looks at messing with retirement to look at an e-7 that does 20. I’ve known a few, and trust me when i say the Combat arms type are as broke dicks
Knees and/or shoulder surgery probably at least once during the 20- I am willing to bet.