Dem platform supports more defense cuts
Because $1.2 trillion in defense cuts isn’t enough to dismantle entirely our military, the Democrats are willing to make the tough choices and slash even more out of defense in the coming years, so that if they lose another election they can blame the incoming Republican for excessive defense spending like they did to Reagan in the 80s and GWB in the aughts after they tore defense to pieces under Carter and Clinton. Says Defense News;
“In our current fiscal environment, we must also make tough budgetary decisions across the board — and that includes within the defense budget,” the Democratic platform states. “The Budget Control Act enacted by Congress last year, with the support of Republicans and Democrats alike, mandates reductions in federal spending, including defense spending. The [Obama] administration has worked with Congress to make these decisions, which has been a strategy-driven process.”
The final portion of that statement will rile congressional Republicans and industry officials, who echo Pentagon brass in warning the automatic $500 billion in cuts to planned military spending would be made devoid of any strategic considerations.
Mainly, it’s because Democrat constituency isn’t concerned about defense as much as they are buying votes from the indigent. So that clarifies what the election is all about this year. Apparently, they’re hoping a Republican will come along eventually to save them from themselves while they slash defense spending down to the marrow in the interim.
Category: 2012 election
Constitutionally mandated function–already at 4 percent of GDP and declining (projected by 2016 to be about 3 percent of GDP.)
Not Constitutionally mandated function (entitlement spending) 16 percent of GDP and increasing.
Love the times we live in.
Reminds me of the Clinton years. Couldn’t qualify because we couldn’t afford the ammo, would go to a 3 week field problem with 20 blanks each, vehicles deadlined for months because we couldn’t afford the parts, etc, etc. Democrats complaining about rolling into Iraq with “hillbilly” armour while turning a blind eye to the fact that Clinton was the reason they had to rely on the “hillbilly” armour.
I went on active duty the same day Carter was sworn in, and after four years swore I would reenlist if and only if he couldn’t. Confirmed re-upping the day after the election in 1980. Hasn’t been a good Dem for Defense in the White House in donkey’s years.
I like the phrase “devoid of any strategic considerations” – isn’t that what they have been doing the last 3.5 years?
here in washington state there are many defense jobs supporting 50-60k a year jobs. im very much looking forward to see them happen and see the damage it will cause the local democrats.
alot more defense work in blue states and counties then red. California, Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, Maine. Real jobs (not mcjobs or gloried social work) too that feed that tax base at that. this isnt even touching on the partnerships the DOD has with universities.
or all the construction work going on military bases…. I really hope the republicans let the blue areas reap what they sowed
Guess the Dems never learn. I served during the Reagan years, and we had to find ways to spend our yearly budget. Our pilots logged plenty of hours, and dropped plenty of bombs. Oh well, back to the bad old days if the Dems get their way.
No matter who gets elected some services are getting cut unless everybody’s taxes go up, maybe not next year or the year after that but unless we finally elect someone who is willing to work the other side of the aisle and get a real spending plan in place for future budgets we will be as financially sound as Greece. We can debate whether cutting defense or food stamps makes more sense until the cows come home and it won’t matter much until we address where the real money leaks out…which will be debt service.
At our current rate of budget ineptitude we will have a 90% Debt/GDP ratio in 10 years according to the CBO (not the most reliable entity to be sure, they tend to underestimate everything in my opinion) and 109% Debt/GDP by 2026 and 200% just 11 years after that. It remains to be seen how accurate Paul Ryan’s numbers will be, but I am pretty confident Obama’s budgetary process sucks and will continue to suck so we need to consider the long term financial health of the nation and start doing some heavy lifting (again).
“Devoid of any strategic considerations”? Isn’t that a euphemism for “we’ll call you if we need you”? This is an excerpt from Pres. Kennedy’s 1951 special message to Congress on defense: “The strength and deployment of our forces in combination with those of our allies should be sufficiently powerful and mobile to prevent the steady erosion of the Free World through limited wars; and it is this role that should constitute the primary mission of our overseas forces. Non-nuclear wars, and sub-limited or guerrilla warfare, have since 1945 constituted the most active and constant threat to Free World security. Those units of our forces which are stationed overseas, or designed to fight overseas, can be most usefully oriented toward deterring or confining those conificts which do not justify and must not lead to a general nuclear attack. In the event of a major aggression that could not be repulsed by conventional forces, we must be prepared to take whatever action with whatever weapons are appropriate. But our objective now is to increase our ability to confine our response to non-nuclear weapons, and to lessen the incentive for any limited aggression by making clear what our response will accomplish. In most areas of the world, the main burden of local defense against overt attack, subversion and guerrilla warfare must rest on local populations and forces. But given the great likelihood and seriousness of this threat, we must be prepared to make a substantial contribution in the form of strong, highly mobile forces trained in this type of warfare, some of which must be deployed in forward areas, with a substantial airlift and sealift capacity and prestocked overseas bases.” This is a link to a 1967 article in Air University Review about Kennedy’s concept of defense needs in the Cold War: http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/mar-apr/smith.html Kennedy was a popular Democratic president. He seems to me to be the only president after Franklin Roosevelt who understood the necessity for a strong and well-equipped military. LBJ bit off more than he could chew with the war in Vietnam. It drove him out of office. Especially now, since… Read more »
I meant to add that the entitlement numbers are equally depressing and not decreasing anytime soon…with health care jumping from 5% of GDP to 10% and SocSec/Medicaid from 10% to 16% over the next 25 years…
It has to be Thursday. That special message was 1961, NOT 1951. Sorry about that.
@11 maybe it was thinking about your shirtless ex and his hunting rifle distracted you a little…
VOV: if we’re serious about getting a handle on Federal spending (and thus deficits), it does matter. DoD currently spends less than 20 cents of each dollar the Federal government spends. Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid/Other Welfare spend over 40 cents. And the Defense share of Federal outlays has been generally dropping proportionally since the Kennedy administration, while spending on unearned entitlements has been rising.
NHSparky has it right. Defense is one of the Federal government’s specified Constitutional functions. Paying for various entitlements earned solely because someone is breathing is not mandated by the Constitution. Yet we now spend twice as much for the latter than the former.
VOV, no, it was my Himmie princess jumping on my lap with her histrionic personality attention-seeking disorder.
Thank you for making me laugh.
Bob Woodward has a book due out Sept. 11 “The Price of Politics” detailing the conflict between the White House and Congress over the budget.
These people in DC have me seriously worried.
Himmie, Ex-PH2? Blue, lilac, seal, chocolate, flame, or cream point?
I’m going to have to (cautiously) swim against the tide here. If we genuinely believe that gov spending it out of control, then there need to be cuts everywhere and the DoD needs to take a haircut just like everyone else. For that matter, given the waste I saw in my 23 years of service, I can’t think of any other organization that is more in need of cutting spending than the military. The depressing thought, though, is that what will get cut is not what needs to get cut but what has the least amount of political support. So we will continue to spend millions and billions on equipment that either doesn’t work or that replaces something that doesn’t need replacing, while the cuts come in things that affect the daily lives of our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen. Just one quick war story: When my NG unit, an artillery brigade HQ battery, deployed to Kuwait in 2004, ARCENT forward had to scramble to find a job for us to do. They finally settled on putting us in ARCENT forward G3 reporting on the status of the deployment camps. Before we got there, the job had been done by two people: an E-7 and and E-5. When we took over, the exact same job was assigned to a group that consisted of a promotable Major (who made O-5 a month later), a captain, two E-7s (one of whom was me), Two E-5’s and two E-4s. We literally had to try and find busy work for our troops to do to keep them out of trouble (and that wasn’t easy because almost all the menial tasks were already being performed by TCNs who were local hires.) This was at the same time things were spiraling out of control up in Iraq and I’m sure there were units there that were short staffed and working round-the-clock shifts while we sat in the air conditioning and surfed the internet. The thing that pissed me off the most was that I’d been pulled out of my last semester of law school to make… Read more »
Hondo,
I think it is unrealistic to think that the 3 items accounting for 60 cents on the dollar won’t get touched in any deficit reduction plan.
Romney/Ryan depending on which budget package they go with aren’t proposing any massive changes over the next 10 years for Defense/SocSec/Medicare. To me that means Romney’s budget only works if you assume that he will cut every thing but Defense/SocSec/Medicare by 57% in 4 years….I am doubting he can get even a Republican Senate/Congress to go along with it. While Ryan’s budget, which is interesting to me due to the reduction to 10% debt by 2050, cuts spending on medicaid 40% over 10 years not 4 and has to draw down 1.5 trillion over 10 years from programs that cost only a half trillion a year currently…meaning they would all be cut to .35 trillion every year for the next 10 without any increase to accommodate the 1.5. This spending includes the FBI, the FDA, the National Institute for Health, the CDC, the Department of Education, NASA, the National Park Service, Housing and Urban Development, the Postal Service, all federal highway and infrastructure spending, and every single research grant the federal government awards, should be interesting to watch that fallout.
Constitutionally mandated or not, I don’t see defense remaining untouched while other programs are slashed to 30-50% of their current levels. It’s not a politically viable position. Everything has to give I think.
We know Obama can’t keep spending down so I am giving Mitt an opportunity to prove me wrong, every politician that has discussed reducing the debt for the last 40 years has been completely full of sh1t because the debt goes up every year and never goes down…here’s hoping I am wrong and Mitt can get it done.
Hondo, seal tortie point (with tortitude).
Ask any enlisted man, active, retired or one tour prior service and they can come up with a shopping list of a dozen or more stupid things that could/should go away within 10 mins or less.
I want to make it clear why the pinheads in DC worry the living daylights out of me.
1 – North Korea, the cage door rattling hermit republic, has a well-equipped and heavily manned military program. That entire country is geared toward making war on someone and has successfully tested two nukes in underground tests that registered on USGS seismographs at 2.2 and 2.5 respectively. And, yeah, their missiles do work in the short range, but they aren’t giving up on their long range birds.
2 – China has spent massive amounts of money on upgrades to military equipment and manpower with all that loot they’ve been collecting from consumer nations, including us. They also have a population group of 100,000,000 men between the ages of 21 and 45, with very low prospects of getting a wife and a slowing Chinese economy. Although it does keep chugging along during this recession, it is as affected by the recession as the rest of the world. Some anthropologist did a study a while back that showed a rise in the possibility of war when the numbers of men between 21 and 45 becomes excessive.
3 – Vlad Putin is still brooding over not being the head KGB guy any more and is working on increasing the Russian military presence in places like Vietnam and Cuba, among other places. (Dobraota, tovarish.) I think he misses the good old days and wants the Cold War back.
I don’t think those clowns have a clue how dangerous it is to think that we aren’t in any danger. Nor do I think that the chief moron in charge has the faintest idea what to do if the US is perceived as weak and witless, but I’m willing to bet he’d be the first one to try appeasement, as per Neville Chamberlain in England per-WWII.
And those who cried appease, appease
Were hung by those they sought to please.
— Anon
Crochity-start with this debacle of women on boats. Sorry, but we don’t have enough money to keep them properly running, we’re about to spend $450 million to rebuild the MIAMI (more than it cost to build her, IIRC) and we’re spending God-knows how much to put women on T-hulls and as of next year, fast boats.
YMMV.
PH2: The cold war is over. North Korea isn’t much of a threat to anyone except its own people. We could pull out of South Korea tomorrow and the ROKs could deal with the DPRK just fine without any assistance from us. North Korea reminds me of a crazy old paraplegic living in a cave with a whole bunch of guns: A danger to anyone who breaks in, perhaps, but not much danger to anyone outside.
China depends too much on trade with us to want to consider war. Furthermore, what would war gain for them? There is no ideological conflict – the Chinese are not interested in exporting socialism or communism like the Soviets were.
Russia – again, they’ve got their hands full just keeping a lid on Russia. What threat do they pose to us?
Iran? Again, tremendously powerful defensively (meaning that if we started anything with them it would get very bloody very quickly) but like the NorKs, their focus is local – they aren’t much interested in exerting influence outside the middle east and their preferred method of doing that is stirring up trouble via proxy groups.
I’m not saying there aren’t threats out there, but I am saying that today’s strategic threats are a fart in a sandstorm compared to the days of the cold war when there were 20 Soviet divisions in East Germany alone (and another 5 in Czechoslovakia) poised to attack.
martin–then why do the Chinese still send technology and technicians to Iran, North Korea, et al?
They are barely a regional power now, but they are a power, and a growing one at that. What they can’t build, they steal, then build.
Iran (or at least the mullahs) have had a hardon for Israel and the US for at least 30 years. Iran as a conventional power is relatively defensive and localized; Iran with a nuke would be unthinkable.
As the saying goes, I don’t fear the man with 1000 nukes who has as much to lose as me, I fear the man with 1 who thinks he has nothing to lose.
BOHICA!
Setting aside all the erudite analysis here and elsewhere this is nothing new.
Although couched in different phrases (thus far) this is little more than our “Peace Dividend”.
Past as prologue.
@23 China doesn’t want the US to have too high a strategic advantage over them via technological methods, else they can’t project power and deal with things like Taiwan. Hence, they acquire our tech by any means necessary, and will often work -to an extent- with our enemies. It’s strategic positioning. They certainly don’t want a war with the US, and their 100M+ men who low on prospects are more likely to turn their frustrations inward unless we give them an excuse to see aggressive posturing. China, for that matter, isn’t ‘socialist’ anymore. There are big differences between the party and the people.
Our biggest problem with China right now is tackling the industrial and academic espionage, and forging better relations for when they can compete on a technological basis with us.
Yeah, everyone who has been in the military for more than a day knows there’s stuff that can be cut from the budget. But anyone who has been in the military for more than a week knows that’s not the stuff they’ll cut.
Even if I were to assume the alarmism about China, North Korea, Iran et al were true (which I don’t), how does a bigger military help us? Even the Chinese, with their 100m men don’t want to duke it out with us Chosin-reservoir style. Ditto for North Korea and Iran, who would much prefer to wage a low intensity campaign of subversion than go head-to-head with our armed forces. Seems to me like too many other militaries in the past we are forever trying to fight the last war.
What I take issue with is what I see as an attempt by the defense establishment to restart the Cold War, by substituting any number of 3rd rate military powers (including China) in the role of the Soviet Union. Was the Cold War so great that we need to continuously reinvent it?
If we want to get serious about cutting the deficit and reducing government spending, then everything has to be on the table, including defense. I can’t imagine that any of us who have served can’t come up with a hundred examples of wasteful and unneccessary spending that could be cut without endangering our national security.
Having said the above, I am NOT a dem and don’t support their platform. What I’m saying is that IMO there are many, many reasons to oppose the dems, but the mere fact that they will cut defense spending is not one of them. And if the republicans were to be so foolish as to say that defense cuts are absolutely off-limits, that, to me, would simply illustrate that they are not serious about cutting spending or reducing the deficit.
Oh, but President “O” is winning the war(s) and we won’t need all them troops and stuff….
The second most expensive mistake any nation can make is to have a military that is too good.
The most expensive mistake any nation can make is to have a military that is not quite good enough.
Your choice. Which error do you want to risk?
This, like so many other deals, really isn’t so very complicated except for those who wish to make it so.
What ain’t specifically in the Constitution the citizens should never be asked to pay for. Pretty much that simply means cutting out everything except defense and call it done.
If the individual states want to do all that other stuff that the feds have usurped as their own, so be it. They have every right to do so.
Of course, some funds should legitimately be spent on border control, since that is part of the security of the nation.
While I am on this soapbox, it is further my opinion that as long as the addicts in this country are being enabled by mostly the feds, but plenty of other entities as well, there is absolutely no prayer of recovering from any of the other ills from which we currently suffer. And as long as everyone remains willing to ignore the pink elephant of addiction and all the evils that go with it that sits in the middle of every room any of us occupy everywhere we go, all else is just marking time.
Hate to point this out, but for the oh-so-thoughtful “everything should be on the table” folks: Defense is ALREADY getting bent over the table.
“As the saying goes, I don’t fear the man with 1000 nukes who has as much to lose as me, I fear the man with 1 who thinks he has nothing to lose.”
Dead on.
When you get cocky or complacent, you are the most vulnerable, the most likely to miss the signals, the most likely to dismiss your opponent as ineffective or weak. Would you care to talk to the Trojans about that party they had? Or how about a brief confab with those people in London whose businesses and homes were destroyed in last year’s riots?
The Cold War may be over, but this isn’t about politics or paranoia.
It’s about plain old common sense. Do you walk home alone at 2AM? The man who has nothing to lose is the one who holds you up at gunpoint or takes hostages in a bank robbery or gets into a shootout with the police.
@ Ex-PH2: The question is, at what cost? If stopping that 1 man from getting a nuke costs $1M it’s clear we do it. What happens if that cost is $1B? $1T? $10T?
And let’s pick $1T as a nice value – should I spend that as $1T purely on (direct) defense, or should I spend 80% on defense and 20% on education & research leading to a new generation of engineers and scientists who give us a multiplier effect via new technology?
You can, fairly, look at the strength of our military, conclude we don’t face any imminent threats (to the country – we can argue about our ability to project force elsewhere), and feel that the limited number of dollars is best spent ensuring our technological and scientific edge – something that benefits our military, economy, health and quality of life.
It’s just as ‘pro-American’ a view as increasing the military budget, just viewed from a different angle and a focus more on the future.
martinjmpr: Are you serious? The military has been getting hosed for the last 3.5 years – during a time of war, no less. Power will ALWAYS flow into a vacuum. The Navy is being cut back to PRE-WWII levels by that fox in the White House (and yes, I hold the long term Republicans in both Houses responsible, also). Between that and the cancellation of the F-22 program, IMO, we have seriously increased the risk of actual war with somebody who can really hurt us. YMMV, but that’s how I see that one. Now let’s get to NK and Iran. I think where you are screwing up is trying to portray either as even remotely rational. If they were, I would concur with your view. IMO, for different reasons, neither is. That family of megalomaniacs running that hell-hole strike me as very similar to another, just like them. If Adolph Hitler hadn’t been a megalomaniac on steroids with a few loose bolts, we would NEVER have won the European Theater. And he was completely ENABLED by that SOB Chamberlain – may God damn his soul to the hottest fires of Hell for all Eternity, for all the horror and blood that stains his hands. And from where I’m sitting, Iran looks exactly the same, with the added twist of “Holy War” to enable the Twelfth Imam to Return. It is certainly possible that it’s all rhetoric and window dressing for the Persian masses, but it doesn’t seem that way for me. Then consider that Iran/Venezuela/Cuba triangle with known training of Hamas/Hizb’Allah/al Qaeda/whoever, happening in Venezuela right now. China is an opportunist waiting for a shot at the title. Russia, the same. They’re both content to wear us down via proxies, but if a knock-out head shot presents itself, IMO they’d take it. Teddy Roosevelt, though I loath his Progressive memory, said it right, “Walk softly, and carry a big stick.” We keep going the way we are, and all we’ll be carrying is a balsa wood twig. Don’t ever think we can’t have a Dunkirk. We can. Every “cut” that… Read more »
I understand some of the military cultural reasons why the Democratic party gets much of the blame for either being weak on national security policy or intentionally shorting military budgets in order to pursue other priorities (post Vietnam era malaise; over missioning the 1990s peacekeeping operations), but I continue to see some basic facts ignored when it comes to the idea that “Rebublicans, good; Democrats, bad” when it comes to national defense. Fact: Two full rounds (1988 and 1991) of Base Realignment And Closure took place before Bill Clinton assumed office and a third (1993) was in full planning stages when he took the oath. The 1995 commission took place under a Republican controlled congress and the 2005 round took place under a Republican administration and Congress.
@35, you make the point the Navy end strength for ships is going down, but is that a valid comparison for measure? What was the force projection capability of an Essex class carrier battle group vice a Nimitz class carrier battle group? I absolutely agree that no matter how advanced a ship is, it still can’t be in two places at once, just trying to make sure that we are thinking and not feeling. More is not always better.
I hear you about China, but based on some (western) news reporting I’ve heard, I think that you would be hard pressed to find a pervasive viewpoint in China that they are even a world power, on the same scale as the USA.
@martinjmpr; as painful as it is, I agree with you. Defense, Social Security and Medicare count for about of 85% of our national budget and its only going to get worse. As Joe Scarborough is found of saying: “This is not about ideology, this is about math”.
Everyone here has a valid viewpoint. The one thing that we all have to remember is that there are people who hate us because we exist, and for no other reason. They will use whatever means it takes to destroy us, which makes complacency and/or cutting back not such a good idea.
And no, we are not in the Cold War era any more. It began with Stalin and ended when the USSR collapsed, but before that, at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the map of the world was redrawn to suit the needs of four nations: Italy, France, Great Britain, and the United States. My source for this is “Paris: 1919”, which is long, thick and heavy and has small print and enormous, thoroughly researched detail. Before WWI, the map of the world was what it became after the dissolution of the USSR, with a few exceptions in European boundaries. Who had ever heard of Bosnia-Herzgovina or Serbia or Croatia before that, unless you watched the Winter Olympics that particular year? Or Azerbaijan, Tajikistan or Kazakhstan? Those names meant nothng to you if you grew up with Cold War history books.
The League of Nations, which was Woodrow Wilson’s idea, never became anything until the end of WWII, when it became the United Nations. Why is this important? Because the history of the Cold War, with its threat of global nuclear annihilation, was the arena of “competition” (for want of a better word) for the three superpowers: the USA, PRC, and USSR. As long as we spied on each other and snorted and pawed the ground, the rest of the world could go on about its business.
And now we have the Taliban and al Qaeda who hate free people everywhere, just because we exist. So how much money should we spend? What do you think your life and your kids’ lives are worth?
The problem is, I see this administration content to see the military sink to the levels of the military on June 24, 1950. And, Baracka has made some pretty disturbing comments regarding nuclear weapons. Mostly, our nuclear weapons. “The Obama administration is weighing options for sharp cuts to the U.S. nuclear force, including a reduction of up to 80 percent in the number of deployed weapons, The Associated Press has learned”. http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/obama-weighs-big-cuts-in-nuclear-weapons-stockpile/article_a3f9b7f5-f92c-5adc-b813-53d71228356a.html
It is an endless cycle that seems like is never going to change. After EVERY war, police action, whatever the hell you want to call it, the military and Marine Corps has been reduced! Then the next time we’re, the services and Marine Corps, are needed, we have to start over again. What’s that adage? “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”! comrade banana is stumbling down that path.
#36 FrostyCWO: ” What was the force projection capability of an Essex class carrier battle group vice a Nimitz class carrier battle group?” I make no claim to being some War College Jedi, but what about also making the comparison to the threats they each face? There were no JDAMs or cruise missiles in the Pacific, 1942, but there were kamikaze planes. In Europe, Hitler had more and better General Officers, Infantry weapons, Armor, fighter aircraft, etc. So, with the exception of the Kriegsmarine (though if Bismarck had gotten out undetected …), it seems to me that the force projection of a CV battlegroup, circa WWII, may be roughly equivalent to current CVN battlegroups with respect to the threats they face, the damage modern weapons can do, range and accuracy improvements, etc. Not to mention the always present chance of the bad guys getting a “Golden BB” through. What about combat losses? All it would take is a nuke in the hold of a ship in the Persian Gulf and there goes all or most of Fifth Fleet. My read on that whole mess over there is that there are DEFINITELY folks who would see that as a gift from Allah and act, re: 12th Imam fanatics. How many Fleets can we lose and still pose a credible threat to whomever? I reiterate, DoD has paid enough to satisfy that “sharing” thing. How about disbanding the Departments of : Energy, Education, HHS, HUD, Homeland Security (shades of the Secret Police …), Interior, the TSA for starters. Social Security needs to be trimmed WAY back, the 75,000+ page Tax Code needs to be scrapped and a flat tax EVERYBODY pays to replace it. A big part of the problem with Medicare is the corruption involved. It continues because the big Hospitals have armies of lawyers to tie things up until the government says uncle and settles for a plea bargain involving zero jail time for anybody, a pathetic fine with “no admission of wrongdoing” and that’s it. Until the next time. Oh, yeah. We got big problems, and I suspect there… Read more »
The “weapons vs social programs” dilemma has been with us for generations, all the way back to pre WW 1 England. And during that time, history has proven that it is better to prep for war. The same Winston Churchill that fought for cutting dreadnaught production from 6 to 4 in 1908 was grateful in 1914 that they wound up with 8.
But the big tragedy is when our military has to begin a war with outmoded, obsolescent, and inadequate equipment because of defense spending cuts after the previous war.
#26 and 40 DOUBLE LIKE! Both comments are well stated.
I just did a one week stint in a Memphis hospital after a fairly serious injury. I received a walker that TRICARE was billed just under $500. I about had a cow when I stopped in a pharmacy a couple of weeks after my release and saw the exact same walker for just under $80.
The DOE could/should just go away. The organization has done NOTHING to actually develop an effective and sustainable energy policy or program since it stood up.
We had the DOE director (Bill Richardson) under Clinton onboard one of the subs I served on for a day trip (pick the VIPs up, take them out to water deep enough to submerge, dive, do an angle or two, surface and then race back to drop them off all in 12 hours or less). The whole crew felt psychologically ill after he left the boat. He took a liking to one of our youngsters and asked for him to accompany him on his touring the boat. The kid was freaked out and had nothing but negative comments about the creepy way the guy conducted himself.
Crochity–seriously? XO/CO got overridden? (So to speak.)
Similar tale–you know how stingy the awards system can be. I had already done a tour on a 688 in Pearl (SUBPAC LOC as an EOT award) and was doing a Radcon tour in Guam (started on Proteus, crossdecked to Holland) when on Friday morning quarters on CCVT, lo and behold, a semi-comely female MSSN got a Navy COM (for those not familiar, NCM’s for below E-7 back in the early 90’s was pretty much unheard of.)
Now what incredible feat of superhuman derring-do did she perform, you might ask? I’ll tell ya–she was one of Bubba Clinton’s ESCORTS when he visited Pearl a few months prior.
I shit you not. We’re all sitting there wondering what this gum-chawing E-3 did to rate ANY medal, let alone an NCM, for escorting a VIP around a base for a day.
YMMV.
When Representatives, Senators, and the President take pay cuts to the 20%ish level, then I’ll believe “everything is on the table” but they aren’t going to cut their own salaries (or personal advisors, consultants, wipers, penis washers, etc.) just the same as DoD won’t cut things that could be cut that are in excess (i.e., budgets annually that end up with people “spending” so they don’t lose it the next FY). They will cut benefits, entitlements, programs, and personnel from the military. Oh wait, they won’t cut certain people’s benefits, like the SecDef’s personal flights home at 33K a weekend.
North Korea? Have you seen the remake Red Dawn about them or something and think that’s reality? The DPRK’s military capacity isn’t what you might think or what it seems. The DPRK, like many adversaries over the years does have a pretty good PSYOP program though.
I was around during the Clinton Era too, 40%ish? cut and 300%ish increase in OPTEMPO to be “peacekeepers” around the world. So, we had lots of work to do, but we couldn’t afford to train for it.
Martin, I don’t think its that we are disagreeing about cuts, but yes we are taking cuts, the Obama administration is regularly looking to cut military related funding from almost day one (i.e., making veterans pay for service-related care), while he was saying, “I won’t balance the budget on the backs of veterans.” Its that DoD is where “the they” run to make cuts, rather than programs that get them elected, get them campaign contributions, etc.