Posted on 02/26/2009 2:38:13 AM PST by Scanian
By all reports, when Presi dent Obama's budget is re leased today, it will envi sion spending more money on defense. The figure thrown around most is an 8 percent increase over last year. But that doesn't necessarily mean more money to support our men and women in uniform - and there's good reason to fear otherwise.
The problem is, we won't know the truth until the administration reveals its plans for "supplemental" funding.
When something happens "out of cycle," like a war - which is not in any department's budget - Congress pays for it by approving supplemental spending. It's been doing just that ever since 9/11.
It made sense. Especially in the early going, it was hard to predict year-to-year what might be needed for operations in Afghanistan - and Iraq only added to the problem.
So, for the last eight years, you had to add the regular and supplemental defense appropriations together to figure out total Pentagon spending
After a while, however, supplemental spending just became a "Christmas tree" for busting the budget. Plus, we can predict now pretty much what is needed each year for fighting the War on Terror overseas. So it would make a lot of sense now to kill the defense supplemental and give the Pentagon one budget - ending the Washington shell game of doling out dollars right and left.
But, if the White House kills the supplemental outright, that means it will actually be spending about $70 billion less for defense next year.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I’m curious as to what non-defense items will be in the defense bill.
They’ll be sure to disguise some nice “porky” stuff under the “defense” heading. They usually do.
As difficult as it is for me to wade through a spending bill, I’ll be closely reading this one.
You’d might as well...you know it’s unlikely that our congressmen will read it.
Not much chance. Obama wants it, Obama gets it.
AFAIK the only promises Obama keeps are spending, raising taxes, and stopping military programs.
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