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<p>The International Monetary Fund on Monday said the United States was getting carried away with a government austerity drive, offering some of the institution's bluntest criticism yet of Washington's rush to cut its budget deficit.</p> <p>Despite high unemployment, Washington is on track to slash its budget shortfall this year by the most in nearly a half century.</p>

We recently learned that the Blue Angels, the USAF Thunderbirds, the Golden Knights and all the Military Demo Teams have cancelled their entire Airshow season due to the Sequester. The Military will not take part in Airshows in any way – not static displays, not flying, nothing. This information has sent the Airshow Industry back to their drawing boards to see how they can move on from here. The Military Demonstration Teams are an enormous draw for these events. Military Teams can increase attendance by up to 30% while bringing many attendees from long distances which increase tourism for their...

Army could lose 100,000 soldiers due to sequestration. Of all the military services facing budget pressure this year, the Army is in the direst of straits. The budget Congress finally passed a month ago will help matters, but the service says it's still more than $15 billion short of funds in fiscal 2013. Army senior leaders told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday that the elimination of a continuing resolution and the passage of a formal budget only fixed about a third of the funding problem they face this year. The sequestration cuts that Congress left in place will force...

Despite the organization being linked to Al-Qaeda and after having several pictures surface online of fighters grilling a decapitated human head, the United States pledged to give Syrian opposition forces $123 million in new defense aid – doubling the aid previously pledged by the Obama Administration. The announcement was made early Sunday morning by Secretary of State, John Kerry, who is meeting in the Turkish capital with opposition leaders. -snip Dave Frederick, a defense analyst is baffled by the administration’s behavior. “This is a true embarrassment for our country and something the Obama Administration should be very ashamed of. In...

According to internal documents obtained by Air Force Times, beginning on Apr. 9, 2013, the U.S. Air Force will begin grounding front line combat units as a consequence of sequestration and the need to deal with budget cuts. Seventeen squadrons belonging to the various U.S. Air Force commands are going to be affected by the stand down order. The grounding is aimed to save the 44,000 flying hours (worth 591 million USD) through September. The funded 241,496 flying hours will be distributed to those squadrons that will remain combat ready or are expected to keep a reduced readiness level called...

According to recent testimony by John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction (SIGAR), the United States has spent nearly 100 billion USD to rebuild Afghanistan in the last decade The decision by the United States Agency for International Development to scrap the completion of a dam project meant to supply electricity to Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban in Afghanistan, is the latest and perhaps largest failure of the United States to use development dollars to create stability by building Afghan infrastructure. USAID had planned to spend $266 million to repair the Kajaki Dam, located in Helmand province,...

A spokesman for the Roanoke County company said the 70 job losses have nothing to do with sequestration. About 70 hourly employees at the ITT Exelis night vision facility in Roanoke County learned Friday that their jobs will end as of April 7. Tim White, a company spokesman, said ITT Exelis is responding to the realities of the defense industry market. He said the job losses have nothing to do with sequestration — the automatic, across-the-board federal spending cuts that took effect this month. “It’s a difficult time,” White said. He said ITT Exelis night vision increased employment in recent years...

Tuesday was a banner day for Gulf Coast industry as the U.S. Navy announced it awarded Northrop Grumman Corp. a $71.6 million contract to produce the next generation of Fire Scout unmanned helicopters, assembled in Moss Point. In addition, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Lockheed Martin Corp. will invest $3 million and create 166 new jobs to build tanks for liquefied natural gas at the Michoud Assembly plant in New Orleans, where the space shuttle tanks were built. The initial 88-foot-long tanks will be used to fuel ships and transport fuel. And at Chevron's 2013 Security Analyst Meeting on...

Due to federal budget issues, the sporting world will soon have to say goodbye to flyovers. Michelle Beadle is alright with the cut because she isn't comfortable using tax dollars to fund this, but Dave Briggs says it's a reminder of our military in front of millions of people.

Republicans and Democrats are blaming one another for impending cuts to the defense budget brought about by sequestration. But with serial annual deficits of $1 trillion-plus and an aggregate debt nearing $17 trillion, the United States -- like an insolvent Rome and exhausted Great Britain of the past -- was bound to re-examine its expensive overseas commitments and strategic profile. The president's nomination of Chuck Hagel for defense secretary was a sort of Zen-like way of having a Republican combat veteran orchestrate a reduced military. In fact, Barack Obama has nurtured a broad and diverse constituency for his neo-isolationist vision....

Just when Californians are finally feeling upbeat again about where the state is heading, here comes a fresh downer: The federal sequester cuts set to kick in this week could cost California billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs while making most of our daily lives more difficult. The state's budget may be balanced and the economy improving, but unless congressional Republicans and President Barack Obama reach a last-minute deal, the federal government on Friday will begin slashing $85 billion this year, including about 8 percent from the Pentagon and about 5 percent from most other discretionary programs....

The major objection most Republicans have to the coming sequestration budget cuts is that the cuts will fall disproportionately on the Department of Defense. That’s true; defense spending is about one-fifth of the federal budget but will take about half of the sequester cuts. But even for the Pentagon, the cuts are only to the rate of growth for the defense budget in coming years. They are not actual cuts that make spending decline. In a February publication, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023,” the Congressional Budget Office (summary here, full report here) outlines the increases...

Something odd happened a few months ago as I weighed the various aspects of the dreaded Sequester Monster, a creature vilified across party lines. It is often true that if enough people in government say something is bad, there is a strong chance of redeeming qualities. So my journey began. The only element of the sequester that bothered me in the least was military cuts. But my friends at the Institute for Policy Innovation properly observe that defense spending will not fall below 2007 levels, which were 75% above pre-9/11Pentagon budgets. High enough for me? Of course not. I actually...

In bleeding heart, do-gooder San Francisco, most fretting over the scheduled federal budget sequester has revolved around what the across-the-board cuts would mean for the poor. Homeless advocates, for example, have warned that if Congress and President Obama don’t compromise by March 1, the city will lose more than $1 million in homeless assistance grants and $800,000 worth of housing vouchers for low-income AIDS patients. But in emphasizing to reporters after last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting that the city’s fairly rosy budget projections for next year would be dramatically worse if sequestration happens, Mayor Ed Lee highlighted something else....

Huge Defense Sector Cuts, What This Means For Your Investments Companies / Sector AnalysisFebruary 16, 2013 - 11:44 AM GMT By: InvestmentContrarian Sasha Cekerevac writes: March 1 is a very big day for many people. Unless Obama and the Republicans make a deal prior to that date, billions of dollars in spending cuts will be enacted. Of all the areas that will be hit, I think the defense market sector will bear the brunt of the cutbacks and the future viability of corporate earnings in this sector is certainly in doubt. At this point, Pentagon officials are now planning for...

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) said Wednesday he was unimpressed by efforts from fellow House Republicans to lay blame for the sequester on President Obama, calling the moves "disingenuous." "I think it's a mistake on the part of Republicans to try to pin the sequester on Obama," Amash told Buzzfeed. "It's totally disingenuous. The debt ceiling deal in 2011 was agreed to by Republicans and Democrats, and regardless of who came up with the sequester, they all voted for it. So, you can't vote for something and, with a straight face, go blame the other guy for its existence in law."...

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House Speaker John Boehner, in advance of President Obama's State of the Union address, said Tuesday that he doesn't think the president "has the guts" to seriously address the country's debt and deficit. The speaker aired his concerns during a breakfast outside his office on Capitol Hill with anchors and reporters covering Obama's address Tuesday night. He said he's pessimistic about the odds the president will tackle the country's long-term spending problem, which he sees as the biggest threat to America's future. "I don't think he has the guts to do it. He doesn't have the courage to take on...

WASHINGTON: Rarely have such pretty slides told such an ugly story. While Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno tries to talk up "The Force of Tomorrow," Army briefing documents obtained today by AOL Defense lay out the near-term impact of sequestration, the Continuing Resolution, and unresolved overseas contingency operations needs: an enormous $18 billion shortfall for the service that will be borne almost entirely by federal workers and military readiness. You can see the slides by clicking "download this document" (up and to the left) and read the detailed talking points here, but the highlights are harrowing enough: Training:...

Just days before he leaves office, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is recommending military pay be limited, effectively decreasing troop salaries next year. Panetta will recommend to Congress that military salaries be limited to a 1% increase in 2014. The Pentagon has calculated that the Labor Department's 2014 Employment Cost Index is expected to be above 1% but wants to still cut back on pay because of "budget uncertainties," a department official told CNN. In 2013, a 1.7% increase was approved, based on the index, which has been the basis for military pay for the last several years. Three Pentagon officials...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says it would “really be a shameful and irresponsible act” for Congress to allow sequestration to happen. “We have to prepare for it, because, you know, there are members up on the Capitol Hill that are saying, ‘Oh no, we're gonna stand back and let sequester happen,’” Panetta said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s "Meet the Press." “Let me tell you: If sequester happens, it is gonna badly damage the readiness of the United States of America. We have the most powerful military force on the face of the earth right now.” If sequester...

The commander of U.S. Special Operations Command said Tuesday that his unit’s budget would lose $1 billion this year as a result of the defense budget stalemate in Washington. During an annual National Defense Industrial Association conference for special operators, Navy Adm. William McRaven noted that the Defense Department is operating on a continuing resolution, which limits spending to 2012 levels, even as automatic, across-the-board spending cuts called sequestration are set to begin March 1. “The continuing resolution … in all honesty puts a greater constraint on us than sequester

Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon has begun laying off 46,000 contract and temporary civilian employees in an effort to cut back on military spending, the No. 2 Pentagon official said on Friday. Full time civilian employees, which number in the hundreds of thousands, also will be furloughed for one day a week for 22 weeks, Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in an interview with wire service reporters. His comments were confirmed by a Pentagon spokesman.

In an effort to cut defense spending, the Obama Administration plans to cut health benefits for active duty and retired military personnel and their families while not touching the benefits enjoyed by unionized civilian defense workers. The move, congressional aides suggested, is to force those individuals into Obamacare, Bill Gertz reported at the Washington Beacon. Gertz added: The proposed increases in health care payments by service members, which must be approved by Congress, are part of the Pentagon’s $487 billion cut in spending. It seeks to save $1.8 billion from the Tricare medical system in the fiscal 2013 budget, and...

Republicans, and many Democrats, are upset by the prospect of so-called sequestration cuts to the nation's defense budget. Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is so alarmed that the day before the Senate took up what became the "fiscal cliff" agreement, he called a key Republican lawmaker, Sen. Lindsey Graham, to express deep concern that the cuts might go into effect. As it turned out, Congress put them off for two months. Sequestration would force the government to reduce discretionary spending by about $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Roughly half of that, or $600 billion, would come from defense --...

Is Obama Always Faithful to our Marines? The current political winds in Washington, DC, have dictated that less will be spent on the various Branches of the Armed Forces of the Unites States. Case in point: the Commander-in-Chief has decided to fire 20,000 of our U.S. Marines. In an article published by San Diego, California's North County Times, ironically on Thanksgiving Day, Military Affairs reporter Gretel C. Kovach cites; "The Corps is shrinking by 20,000 Marines, to 182,100." The North County Times also cited that America's premier fighting force is; "scraping to repair or replace battle-worn equipment." In spite of...

With no time to recover from a thorough election day whooping, Republicans in a lame duck Congress are facing an even worse budgetary nightmare than last year. And they only have two months to negotiate a solution with President Obama. Last time, as the Chair the Balanced Budget Amendment campaign, fellow conservatives and I were urging Republicans to tie the unavoidable increase in the debt ceiling to a balanced budget amendment. Because it also prohibited tax increases, the amendment would have required balance to be achieved through necessary cuts throughout the federal government. But in the end, politicians did what...

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate rose from 7.8% to 7.9% for October. The number of unemployed in the US rose from 12,088,000 in September to 12,258,000 in October. An increase of 170,000. The good news is that non farm payrolls increased by +171,000. Bear in mind that these numbers are misleading because Lockheed announced layoffs of 123,000, but was asked by the Obama Administration to delay the layoffs until after the election. So, add 123,000 to the number of unemployed and deduct 123,000 from the NFP jobs created of 171,000. So, the actual increase in...

HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah (CBS St. Louis) — Boeing successfully tests a new missile that can take out electronic targets with little collateral damage. The aerospace company tested the microwave missile last week on a two-story building on the Utah Test and Training Range where computers and electronic systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the missile’s radio waves, according to a Boeing press release. The missile, known as CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project), fired a burst of High Powered Microwaves at the building, successfully knocking out the electronic systems and computers, and even taking out...

A year before Mitt Romney picked him as a running mate, Paul Ryan gave a speech in which he discussed the promise and peril of the Arab Spring. "It's too soon to tell whether these revolutions will result in governments that respect the rights of their citizens or in one form of autocracy ... supplanting another," he said. "While we work to assure the former, American policy should be realistic about our ability to avert the latter." More generally, Ryan said, "American policy should be tempered by a healthy humility about the extent of our power to control events in...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ari.) blasted President Obama for his “snarky cheap shots” at Mitt Romney during Monday night’s debate, calling them “unpresidential.” “The president had his snarky cheap shot remarks which are both unpresidential and not likeable,” McCain told "Fox and Friends" on Tuesday morning. In particular, McCain pointed to one of the most talked about moments from the third and final presidential debate, in which Obama sarcastically responded to Romney’s criticism of the proposed $1 trillion in defense cuts from last year’s Budget Control Act and sequestration. Romney accused Obama of allowing the military to be cut to historically...

Sequestration will not happen. President Barack Obama made this assertion Monday night during the third and final presidential debate in Boca Raton, Fla. "The sequester is not something that I proposed," Obama said, of the $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts set to kick in on Jan. 2. "It's something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. The budget that we're talking about is not reducing our military spending. It's maintaining it." Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney used the debate to outline their different approaches to reducing federal spending. "We're going to cut about 5 percent of the...

House Democrats opened Wednesday’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing by attacking Republicans for cuts to embassy security funding — cuts that only happened thanks to overwhelming support from House Democrats, INCLUDING House Oversight Committee Ranking Democratic member Rep. Elijah Cummings. In fact, more House Democrats – 149 of them — voted for the cuts than did House Republicans, of which 147 voted for them.

Mitt Romney's effort to overtake President Obama in the crucial swing state of Virginia may depend on how effective he is at convincing voters he can limit the economic damage from pending defense cuts. The Republican presidential candidate will give a foreign policy address at the Virginia Military Institute on Monday, looking to highlight what he calls President Obama's "taking a meat cleaver to the military." Under a deal between the Obama administration and Congress to raise the nation's borrowing capacity last year, leaders agreed to implement $1.2 trillion in automatic, across-the-board reductions over the next decade if a broader...

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin heeded a request from the White House today — one with political overtones — and announced it will not issue layoff notices to thousands of employees just days before the November presidential election. Lockheed, one of the biggest employers in the key battleground state of Virginia, previously warned it would have to issue notices to employees, required by law, due to looming defense cuts set to begin to take effect after Jan. 2 because of the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — the so-called Super-committee, which was created to find a way...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The White House on Friday told government contractors worried about fiscal cliff spending cuts to hold off on warning employees about possible layoffs. The government said it would cover legal costs if contractors are forced to slash their payrolls because of the looming $109 billion in automatic cuts next year and are alleged to have violated the WARN Act. .... Defense contractors in particular have warned for months that the upcoming sequester would cost jobs in their industry. And Lockheed Martin's CEO has said publicly he may be forced to issue notice this fall of possible...

The Middle East is ablaze again, literally, and Israel is sending strong signals that it intends to attack Iran's nuclear complex with or without U.S. assistance. It would be nice to stay out of this latest round of regional violence -- most Americans have had their fill of foreign entanglements for the time being -- but sometimes circumstances don't afford us that luxury. If Iran responds to an Israeli air strike by trying to close the Strait of Hormuz, Washington will need to act. Imagine, though, that the crisis came after across-the-board spending cuts triggered on January 2, pursuant to...

In 1989, the year President Ronald Reagan left office and the Berlin Wall came down, total spending by the Department of Defense equaled $468.7 billion in constant 2005 dollars, according to the Office of Management and Budget. In 2005, when President George W. Bush started his second term, and the U.S. was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq, DOD spent $473.4 billion in constant 2005 dollars. This year, under President Barack Obama, DOD will spend $582.5 billion in constant 2005 dollars. In inflation-adjusted dollars, Obama is spending 23 percent more on defense than Bush did when the United States...

MANSFIELD, Ohio — Seeking to regain the offense in the presidential campaign, Mitt Romney on Monday said President Obama is to blame for the automatic defense-spending cuts looming at the beginning of next year and that those reductions will devastate communities in Ohio and other key political states. Read more: Romney warns of looming defense cuts - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/10/romney-warns-of-looming-defense-cuts/#ixzz267ZLLvIV Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

President Obama will exempt all military personnel accounts from the $500 billion in defense cuts under sequestration, the Obama administration said in a letter to Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients told Congress the president is exercising his authority in the Budget Control Act to exempt military personnel from the 10-year sequestration cuts, according to the letter obtained by The Hill. The decision to exempt personnel will place further strain on the budget accounts that defense contractors rely on for weapons programs, should the automatic spending cuts occur.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved an amendment to the 2013 defense appropriations bill that would ban money from being used in violation of federal law prohibiting same-sex marriage in the military. The amendment was introduced by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who said that it is “a much needed solution to a problem started by an administration that's prone to ignoring the law.” In a statement released shortly after the legislation passed, King explained that his amendment “prohibits the use of both military funds and facilities for same-sex marriages.” “The military is an entity of the federal government, and federal...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I got an e-mail this morning from Cal Thomas, and he got an e-mail from Jim Pinkerton. You all know who James Pinkerton is. Pinkerton is on the Fox News media analysis show. And this is a story from the UK Telegraph that these guys were sending back and forth to each other. Cal Thomas sent it to me. The headline of the story -- and it's dated today -- "US Weapons 'Full of Fake Chinese Parts' -- Thousands of United States' warplanes, ships and missiles contain fake electronic components from China, leaving them open to malfunction,...

America's new long-range bomber program is "underway," will involve somewhere between 80 and 100 planes and will be delivered sometime in the mid-2020's. "And that's about all we're saying," Air Force Secretary Mike Donley told reporters. It's been known for some time that the bombers will not fly alone but will be part of a family of systems that may include UAVs and other systems. The really interesting part of all this is the secrecy and why it's so dark. It would seem to indicate several things: that the U.S. does not want potential competitors such as China or Russia...

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It's the most expensive fighter jet ever built. Yet the F-22 Raptor has never seen a day of combat, and its future is clouded by a government safety investigation that has grounded the jet for months. The fleet of 158 F-22s, including those in Alaska, has been sidelined since May 3 after more than a dozen incidents in which oxygen was cut off to pilots, making them woozy. The malfunction is suspected of contributing to at least one fatal accident, in Alaska. At an estimated cost of $412 million each, the F-22s amount to about $65 billion sitting on the...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) introduced legislation to raise the debt ceiling this week. In evaluating his plans for future government spending, it becomes clear that budgeting for prudent defense is considered just another line item. While Americans intuitively know that national security is unlike any other category of federal spending, it is often treated with inherent bias through insider budgeting methods. Congress tends to selectively ignore what are called “baselines” used for comparing different spending proposals. This is convenient if a Member of Congress wants to generate more phantom cuts to appease a core audience—or, worse, to not...

"A lot of the spending cuts that we're making should be around areas like defense spending as opposed to food stamps," President Obama told in an interview with NPR.

Representative Paul Ryan (Wisc.-1) and the House GOP released their ten-year budget entitled "The Path to Prosperity" [pdf] to much fanfare on Capitol Hill yesterday, laying out an alternative to President Obama's proposal. Compared to baseline numbers, the Path to Prosperity spends $5.8 trillion less, and $6.2 trillion less than the President's budget over the next ten years. The largest spending cuts come from the discretionary budget, both defense ($830 billion) and non-defense ($1.6 trillion). Rep. Ryan's defense budget accepts the proposals laid out by defense Secretary Robert Gates and endorsed by President Obama, but cuts spending in every other...

US naval aviation back on the rise © Northrop Grumman How Northrop Grumman sees the carrier deck of 2020 Retired Vice Adm Robert Dunn remembers being called to the Secretary of the Navy's office. It was 1989 and the US Navy was still at the peak of its Cold War, 600-ship glory. Defence spending, however, was already in decline and the navy's top civilian, Henry Garrett, had a tough decision to make. As deputy chief of naval operations for aviation, Dunn's portfolio included two projects for a carrier-based, long-range strike aircraft - a re-engined Grumman A-6E Intruder called the A-6F...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-02-14-budgetinside14_ST_N.htm?csp=34news For five years running, two presidents have tried to eliminate funding for a backup engine on a fighter jet, a program Defense Secretary Robert Gates calls unnecessary. Congress, however, has rebuffed the White House and continues to fund the $465-million-a-year alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, amid intense lobbying by General Electric, the corporate giant working with Rolls-Royce to develop that engine. General Electric's aggressive outreach ranges from running ads on the subway cars that congressional staffers take to work to deploying dozens of well-connected lobbyists to Capitol Hill and the Pentagon.... ...Among the new lawmakers backing...