The Pentagon vs. The Welfare State

Any reporter who's written about the federal budget knows that there's a surefire solution to every problem. It's called "fraud, waste and abuse." You want to end budget deficits? Just eliminate all the "fraud, waste and abuse" in the $4 trillion budget. The same is true for cutting taxes or raising spending. Attacking fraud and waste is virtuous and dispenses with the hard political work of making unpopular choices.

...it turns out that the estimated savings of $125 billon are spread over five years, from fiscal 2016 to 2020. This changes the numbers dramatically. Instead of annual savings of 22% of the defense budget ($125 billion out of $580 billion), the plausible cuts are closer to 4%...

...The Pentagon says it needs more spending than the existing budget ceilings allow. Some experts agree. O'Hanlon argues that defense spending should increase by nearly $50 billion annually over existing levels. How should we respond to the various threats: terrorism, cyberwarfare, Russia, China?

Whatever the answer, we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that the contradiction can be resolved by eliminating vast amounts of waste. If we wish to reduce defense spending, we have to cut the military's size and capabilities. If we wish to expand the military, we need to pay for it.

The underlying struggle pits the Pentagon against the welfare state. Over the decades, national priorities have shifted dramatically. As late as 1990, defense spending constituted 24% of the federal budget and 5% of the economy (gross domestic product). In 2015, defense was 16% of the budget and 3% of GDP — and these figures were declining. This is one war the Pentagon is clearly losing.

A woman who has children from 6 different "baby daddies" and declares on TV that "Someone gotsa pay!"

That is "fraud waste and abuse."

National Defense is in the Constitution!

These are not: Universal Program for Subsidized Phones for Low Income (ObamaPhones), EBT Food Stamps, Medicaid, ObamaCare, Section 8 Housing, Unemployment, TANF Welfare, Energy Assistance, EITC, Foster Care Title IV, Old Age Assistance, AFDC, General Assistance Cash, Assets for Independence, General Assistance to Native Americans, SCHiP State Supplemental Health Insurance Program, Consolidated Health Centers, Consolidated Community Health, Maternal and Child Health Assistance Fund, Healthy Start, School Lunch, Job Assistance, Job Training, Minority Job Assistance, Job Relocation, Woman Infants and Children's Program, Nutrition for the Elderly, Summer Program, Summer Jobs Program, Minority Summer Jobs, Hispanic Jobs Program, African-American Jobs Program, Commodity Supplemental Food Program, Special Milk Program, Needy Families, Farmer's Market Nutrition Program, Public Housing, Low Income Energy Assistance, Migrant Education, Title One Grants to Local Education Authorities, Education for Homeless Children and Youth, Even Start, Job Corps, Social Security for Refugees, Social Security for Humanitarian Cases, Social Security for Asylum, Health Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Grants, TANF Child Care, Empowerment Zones for Minority Communities, Urban Development Action Grants, and Family Planning (abortion).

There are 2 types of fraud, waste and abuse.

1) A program has a legitimate and valuable purpose but has fraud, waste and abuse. The military has a purpose. When I was in Vietnam in 66-67, well over half the 550,000 in uniform were unnecessary overhead (including me). We did zero toward winning the war.

2) Entire programs are not legit. They have no constitutional basis to exist. An unConstitutional program is fraud by definition.

3) Other programs are permitted but not required by the Constitution. Or required by the Constitution but no longer appropriate for the Federal government. The Post Office is Constitutional. For our first 200 years it was needed. But the concept of a government post office is not obsolete.

For 200 years Post Roads were needed and a Constitutional role for the Feds. But the need now is for maintenance of the existing system. The need for new roads is limited to short spurs, connectors and bypasses. This is best done by state and local government. It is waste for the Feds to do local maintenance.

The amount of Fraud, Waste and Abuse is massive. It has built in special interests who seek to protect it.

FReepers have been known to post protectively of waste because it is Constitutional.

I spent 30 years as a contractor on government weapons programs. The largest waste is in the contract. It is the green agenda, which mandates ridiculous and outrageous spending on silly things, like eliminating lead or cadmium when those are the best possible, cheapest solutions to the problems they address. It is the gay agenda which mandates indoctrination programs and diversity teams. It is the political agenda that peels off a piece of the weapon for a favored contractor who is clueless and unable to perform or whose solution degrades the entire weapon while needlessly increasing costs. It is the mandated set-asides for special political groups like women and blacks, who sometimes subcontract their part right back to the main contractor while adding their substantial rake-off to the costs. It is the ludicrous schedules and the criminal way award fees are given out based on spending rather than accomplishment. It is the mandate that if a company pushes back on ridiculous requirements they are automatically thrown out of the competition in favor of a company that lies about what it can do.

This is just a handful of items that are in the contract that multiply the cost by, sometimes, ten or more times. They are the seeds of failure built into the process before it even begins. It’s amazing we do get good hardware. most times, in the end. But that hardware costs a lot more than it should. No one in the process has the power necessary to trim out the fluff. It would literally take a representative of the president sitting in on the meetings and nixing all the agenda interests to cut the costs.

If you want to see how to make a big project fail there is no better example than the Future Combat System contract.

Liberals and the Media luv to go on and on about the “Military Industrial Complex” (MIC). Eishenhower’s last speech gave them a big club (whether he intended to do that or not) to wack us with. But no one has taken a hard look at the Welfare-NGO complex (WNC). Over the decades this has risen up and, arguably, gotten bigger than the MIC. There are many people who make an extremely good living “helping” the downtrodden. Or, more accurately, pretending to help the downtrodden while lining their own pockets. Those people, plus every other liberal interest group, salivates over the Pentagon budget as an untapped resource.

There is also an army of Beltway Bandits in the DC area who make an art of taking their cut. Not all of these are bad, but a lot are. Sadly, many of them are retired military. I’ve worked in SPOs and seen these people in action. They cause problems then lobby to hire more consultants to solve the problem they caused. I’ve also seen the Prime Contractors play games too. Like getting the SPO to buy into unrealistically agressive schedules, then getting paid again for the ECPs to fix them.

Of course, any human endeavor of sufficient size is going to have these issues. Big programs are also a big target for waste and stupidity—and probably always will be.

“Of course, any human endeavor of sufficient size is going to have these issues. Big programs are also a big target for waste and stupidity—and probably always will be.”

I agree across the board with your post. The entire budget could be gone over if the president had a line item veto. But even when they have trimmed the president rarely trims plumbs going to his own party. Because of the nature of the beast, he must have votes and support, so agendas and programs and projects that would never be justifiable get included. Bridges to nowhere get funded. Road maintenance on roads that are brand new get into the budget and get done. (The Highway running from Tallahassee to Pensacola was brand new and didn’t even have cracks but it was completely removed and repaved with federal money.)

I attacked the back end of military contracts because, I know them and, I think, like cockroaches, their advocates would mostly run under the refrigerator when the spotlight of publicity was turned on them.

NGO’s like the Clinton Crime Foundation, stole billions of dollars from Haiti. Yep, plenty of fertile hunting grounds there too.

Another warning from President Eisenhower in his “military-industrial complex” speech was about the equal danger of a “government-academic scientific complex.” Following is an excerpt from an article linked to at the end of this post:

During the 1961 address, in which the president famously warned of the danger to the nation of a growing armaments industry referred to as a “military-industrial complex,” he included a few sentences about risks posed by a scientific-technological elite. He noted that the technological revolution of previous decades had been fed by more costly and centralized research, increasingly sponsored by the federal government.

“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields… ,” Eisenhower warned. “Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”

While continuing to respect discovery and scientific research, he said, “We must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

https://www.aaas.org/news/after-50-years-eisenhower%E2%80%99s-warnings-against-scientific-elite-still-cause-consternation

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