Put It On The Table

The Washington Examiner calls upon Republicans to put the defense budget on the table when they cut spending:

Defense spending should not be a sacred cow

...We were fully funding the military in 2008, and there is no good reason we cannot spend at the same level in 2011. This is one area where Republicans and President Obama possibly can work constructively together. They should listen to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who in a May speech declared that "as a matter of principle and political reality, the Department of Defense cannot go to America's elected representatives and ask for increases each year unless we have done everything possible to make every dollar count."

Let's go.

WOW - JOM GETS RESULTS!  At a recent press conference SecDef Gates announced budget cuts:

The Pentagon will have to cut spending by $78 billion over the next five years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday, forcing the Army and Marine Corps to shrink the number of troops on active duty and eventually imposing the first freeze on military spending since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The surprise announcement from Gates was a reminder for the military establishment - which has benefited from a gusher of new money over the past decade - that it will not remain exempt from painful austerity measures that federal lawmakers say will be necessary to control the soaring national debt.

In a news conference to announce the cuts, Gates said he hopes that "what had been a culture of endless money . . . will become a culture of savings and restraint" at the Defense Department.

OK, Obama favors it, so it is time to engage the Reflexive Opposition Overdrive!

Comments

[Rob Crawford]

First, zero out foreign aid to hostile regimes.

[clarice]

Well, with Murtha no longer able to divert so much of DoD's budget to his own playthings, why not?

[PaulY]

Lots of "military spending" is for other purposes than national defense

[Ignatz]

Then zero it out to friendly ones.

[squaredance]

The very last thing that "we" should do is listen to the quisling Gates.
We need stronger Military not a weaker one.

This is actually a real "investment".

We halt new drilling, we p!ss away trillions to Liberal special interest groups and constituencies, Wall St., and who knows who else, and we turn around and tear down one of our major (and necessary) institutions.

All a part of the plan.

It needs to be rejected and revoked.

Here is a jobs program for you: bring back the F22

[boris]

Italiacto (IE)

[Jim Ryan]

How about all hands on deck for slashing entitlements spending and eliminating the kleptobureaucracy?

After that, perhaps there is some waste in defense to cut, but let's not get distracted.

[Lord Whorfin says Smoke the Damn Cigar!]

Just say NO to italics!

Here's a jobs, increased tax revenue suggestion:

Open all of the US and offshore to drilling

Build enough new refineries to replace the old, inefficient ones and add capacity.

First of all, the price of crude would drop like a stone, giving an immediate boost to the economy

Then, income from taxes on all the new workers, and the increase in tax revenues from the companies that see increased sales to the state and federal governments would go a long way towards reducing the deficit.

I can't understand why the Dems can't see this. Not that I want them to, but they would have enormous quantities of new money to spend on their pet projects.

Lower gas prices and increased tax revenue- what's not to like??

[rse]

Can anyone who has been through basic training tell me if there has always been an emphasis on limiting food intake?

Off topic- VDH doesn't call them "credentialed morons" but he sure does describe the mindset and phenomenon well.

LUN

Kim will especially like his examples.

[Cecil Turner]

How about all hands on deck for slashing entitlements spending and eliminating the kleptobureaucracy?

Hear hear. As long as we insist entitlement spending is "mandatory" (along with programmed increases) and untouchable, the rest doesn't really matter. It can't work in the long term. And eviscerating that Obamacare beast would be a moral victory that could perhaps signal the [beginning of a] return of fiscal sanity.

[Jack is Back!]

I am a defense hawk, and there is a lot of Congressional authorized/appropriated fat & irrelevant programs. Like the optional engine for the JSF and the waste rebuffing the refueled. Fighting Obama is one thing, fighting Boeing, Lockheed and GD is another thing. We will soon see how stiff the Repub backbone really is.

[Jack is Back!]

Rebuffing=rebidding

iPad spellcheck bad.

[matt]

The Pentagon is riven with waste. Billions in programs vanish with poor oversight and management on a macro level as at the same they micromanage the unimportant.

Rumsfeld did try to lasso the beast, but in this, as well as most else, he failed.

[Rick Ballard]

I'm with JiB on this one. The House will pass the repeal of Obamacare very shortly. The bills necessary to implement the Roadmap are going to form the essence of the campaign to get the commie out of the Oval Office and will address entitlements as they are brought forward.

There is no reason why entitlement restrictions (Section 8 housing or food stamp eligibility) can't be brought forward in conjunction with defense program reductions as proof that nothing is 'off the table'. I'd shoot for a reversal of the takeover of student loans up front as well.

[Ignatz]

--Can anyone who has been through basic training tell me if there has always been an emphasis on limiting food intake?--

Not sure what that's in reference to, but when I went through AF basic thirty years ago (jeez writing that makes me feel old) they fed us like kings.

[Rob Crawford]

"iPad spellcheck bad."

Check "Damn You Autocorrect", LUN.

[Pagar]

Ignatz, mine was over fifty years ago, and I gained somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty five pounds.

[Richard Aubrey]

They used to say that the Army fed you the equivalent of 1.25 daily rations, the daily ration having been calculated by some sillvilian who'd never done a day's physical labor.
Dod spending is dependent on necessity which is usually determined by people other than Americans. See Harbor, Pearl.

[Extraneus]

What's wrong with the plan to cut everything back to 2008 levels? Simple first step, and another one-page bill.

[rse]

OK so everyone agrees that the emphasis on first having fruit before you can eat and recruits talking about food all the time because they are hungry is new?

These are not a group who needs to be told "Lets move".

I suspected it was new as I read about the program somewhere along with a rep sad that it was only in basic that they had sufficient control to dictate all food consumption.

[Lord Whorfin says Smoke the Damn Cigar!]

Ex-
Your comment is too logical- Take two Vulcans (your choice of gender) and call me in the morning.

[glasater]

I gained somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty five pounds

If you gained that much weight Pagar you were too skinny--at the time:)

I'm with Lord Whorfin on this one -- lack of developing our own carbon energy resources may be what kills O's re-election chances.

[Lord Whorfin says Smoke the Damn Cigar!]

Could someone here tell me how to post a picture in my comment?

Experiment

Never mind- failure.

Help!!

[Extraneus]

Get the picture's URL (right click, copy image location), then post it like this:

<img src="picture url"/>

[Danube of Thought]

"Can anyone who has been through basic training tell me if there has always been an emphasis on limiting food intake?"

What I remember is signs saying "take all you want, but eat all you take.". Why not? We were burning 5,000 calories per day.

But JiB is right--there is room for some major re-thinking of the entire defense budgeting and procurement process. Eighty-five percent of what goes on in the Pentagon is about buying things, and everyone is diligently lobbying for his own project, as his job description requires.

[DrJ]

"What's wrong with the plan to cut everything back to 2008 levels? Simple first step, and another one-page bill."

For one thing it would kill the programs of those who are supported by NIH (who, me?). They have obligations to fund existing grants, and if their funding amount is rolled back, the success rate of new grant applications would fall from 10-15% that it is now (depends on the Institute) to about 5%.

I'm good, but not *that* good. It would likely put me out of business.

[Jim Ryan]

Woo hoo! VA-5's Robert Hurt sworn in.

[matt]

I'm with DoT on that one. The first 2 weeks are almost all PT and indoctrination trying to turn civilians into warriors. The amount of running and pushups was incredible.

[Lord Whorfin says Smoke the Damn Cigar!]

Thanks, Ex- its a picture/pdf scan of mine from an old Polaroid- Will I have to scan it as a picture, instead of pdf??

Thanks, and apologize for OT

[Extraneus]

In order to link a pic, it has to be on the web somewhere. I think a lot of people use photobucket, but someone else would have to let you know how to do that. Once it's on the web, that img tag should do it.

[Lord Whorfin says Smoke the Damn Cigar!]

So I could post it to my Facebook page, and then link from there??

[narciso]

In theory, yes, I would support defense cutbacks, but in practice, someone who made
a pledge to an Iowa peace group to cut defense
by a substantial percentage, I don't think I would go with that, so if the F-22 is out, the
alternative, is in the LUN, what's left for
an aerial component

[Porchlight]

So I could post it to my Facebook page, and then link from there??

You could, but only people who are FB friends with you could see it, unless (maybe) you made it available to everyone (not sure if you can do that with individual FB photos).

[He chose unwisely and drank the green Kool-Aid.]

Yeah, rse, I caught VDH through tomnelson.blogspot.com this AM. Poor Schwartzenegger; I liked him as an actor and a Governor, until just lately.
===========

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

I like Rick's approach. At least since Eisenhower, it has been recognized that the "military industrial complex" is a worthy target for aggressive budget control. And as the Truman Committee found during WWII, there is plenty of fat to be cut in defense contracts, even in time of war. The massive DOD bureaucracy is also a great target for spending reduction.

Of course entitlements are the major problem with spending and the debt. But politically, there is no chance to get to entitlements without scrutiny of Defense.

[larry]

I gained about 40 in basic, then another 10 on a football training table which overlapped. My recollection is that there was plenty, but as above, eat all you take.

[Chubby]

This headline currently up on Drudge is mind boggling:

Pelosi's Final Debt Tab: $5.3 Trillion Added During Speakership -- $3.67 Billion/Day...

[Holly]

I have no doubt whatsoever that after two years of Dem chicanery, every defense program will now need cleansing.

E.g, DARPA. Obama appointed a director who immediately called a ceases and desist on all existing programs, announcing a new focus for study: social networking. Bye-bye UAVs and other military defense projects. America needs a better facebook. For two years, project managers at DARPA have been twiddling their thumbs, waiting . . .

Pisses me to no end.

[Boatbuilder]

It's not about cutting defense; I seriously doubt that anyone on the right would object to cutting defense back to 2008 levels if it was part of cutting ALL SPENDING to 2008 levels.
Where do I sign? More to the point--how do we enforce the cuts to the rest of government?

[Cecil Turner]

Exactly. It isn't that DoD isn't a ripe candidate for trimming, it's that it's a distraction. There are lots of ways to crunch the numbers, but basically Defense accounts for only 14% of the total spending pie (24% of Federal spending with all supplementals tallied), or half the "discretionary" budget. And while the budgeteers are sharpening their knives on cutting weapons systems, the truly hard stuff isn't getting done. And it needs to get done.

Also, there is plenty of waste in Defense, but across-the-board cuts are unlikely to remove it surgically. Instead we'll cut capacity, as SecDef Gates's preemtive strike outlines. Which is probably okay, as we have some excess capacity. But some of those cuts are going to look foolish in a few years, as they spark mini arms races. For example, the F-22 cancellation is directly related to the Chinese stealth fighter development:

The Chinese government and military have maintained silence on the apparent tests, which suggest that China is making faster-than-expected progress in developing a potential rival to the U.S. F-22—the world's only fully operational stealth fighter.

Gee, that was hard to see coming (er, not). Just like the START agreement is going to speed up nuke production/modernization there.