"...one thing we know for sure, is they can wipe out the Twinkie consumption at the Pentagon"
Entitlement spending benefits only specific groups whos votes the lawmakers seeks.
Lets get that straight first.
OK, pizza delivery on the chopping block.
I know there is savings to be had in the Military. I might have an issue with replacing some military jobs with civilian personnel. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that when military gets replaced by civilians, civilians are paid a lot more. So while defense spending may go down, overall spending will go up. I could be wrong, but knowing our govt, I bet I’m not.
I’m not convinced there isn’t waste, but I’ll be damned if I can understand what these pricks want.
Our Navy is at 1915 levels. Our air-force numbers are disintegrating.
What are these assholes shooting for, a Davy Crockett era defense strategy?
Meanwhile, our welfare and giveaways have never been larger, are sinking our nation, and these guys never mention it.
I am mad as hell at the whole lot of them back there.
Now, quick, lets get back to naturalizing the 20 to 35 million illegals in country. That’s a top national priority! /s
"...one thing we know for sure, is they can wipe out the Twinkie consumption at the Pentagon"
Money appropriated for defense spending will be re-appropriated by Obama for his favorite programs.
Coburn with the Gang of Six last year. First time he wore the label of RINO. Looks like he isn’t trying to shake it off.
Cut all defense and anti terror pending for New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle.
They will be fine.
Cut all defense and anti terror spending for New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle.
They will be fine.
One thing he has referenced as an example of waste that has caught flak on other forums on this site is the military spending money on grocery stores. I can tell you the on base commisaries are great and especially useful as they allow troops stationed overseas to buy food without venturing into the local market and for troops located at remote bases (i.e. Fort Irwin) where the nearest local stores are an hour away.
Though I support our military and our service personnel, please separate them in your mind from what the Pentagon does. First of all, look where the money goes (excluding special funding for Iraq and Afghanistan):
Operations and maintenance $283.3 b
Military Personnel $154.2 b
Procurement $140.1 b
Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation $79.1 b
Military Construction $23.9 b
Family Housing $3.1 b
To start with, the first two are the real “meat” of the military. Equipment and personnel we have. So these two are not really on the chopping block.
The need for cutbacks begins with the third entry, Procurement, which is *always* troublesome. If it is too easy and direct, quality suffers and there is room for graft and corruption. But if too many layers are added to insure quality and honesty, the price goes up as well, and the process bogs down. And there is still graft and corruption.
Where procurement happens, as in what congressional district, is just as important as what is being procured. There are always surpluses and shortages, though the preference is always to surplus. And surplus is very expensive to store.
In any event, R&D, and T&E, the fourth largest part of the budget, is at times downright amazing, and at other times, downright appalling. The two big agencies for this are DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). These are the people who create the future military of our country.
The trouble is that much of what they do is highly classified, so finding waste is a haphazard study.
It’s issues like runaway defense spending that separate the truly limited government activists from the pretenders.
Think about this freepers. “I want smaller, Constitutionally limited government but the military can never get too big.” Seems a tad inconsistent, doesn’t it?
The democrats have been adding all sorts of non-defense spending into the defense department budgets, so they could pretend they were supporting the military.
There are billions of dollars for studying how global warming will effect our national security, billions for developing green technology for the military, billions for biofuels, billions for research and development of alternative energy sources.
As Coburn says, he can identify $68 billion of cuts that wouldn’t touch actual military items.
And yes, it is clear we have too many upper level manager types, that’s why two generals had time to have affairs and send thousands of e-mails about it.
One way to save a lot of money for defense is to stop all TAD for one year. That would save a lot of money and have little damage to the over all military and federal government.