Free Republic

The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee announced Wednesday he opposed military intervention in Syria unless he finds more money for the Defense budget and details a broader strategy. “Today I told the Administration that I cannot support military action in Syria unless the President presents to Congress his broader strategy in the region that addresses our national security interests and the budget to support it. President Obama has decimated our military beginning with his first budget four and a half years ago. He has underfunded overseas contingency operations (OCO) fund, reduced base defense budget, and put...

This spring, it was headline news when one-third of America's active duty Air Force combat aircraft, including fighter and bomber units, were grounded due to automatic budget cuts. This became a real and tangible problem when the U.S. military started seriously evaluating available options for the Commander-in-Chief in Syria. A no-fly zone was considered one choice at the top of the list. But had the Air Force been called into short-notice action, there would have been serious problems with mission execution and success as a result of these widespread aircraft groundings. Now the military is again updating its choices...

President Obama took his case for ending the sequester to hundreds of disabled veterans Saturday, saying he protected their benefits from the “reckless” cuts to the federal budget but suggesting next year might be different. “It’s hurting our military. I made it clear that your veteran’s benefits are exempt from this year’s sequester,” the president said to the applause of hundreds at the Disabled American Veterans' convention in Orlando, Fla. “But I want to tell you going forward the best way to protect the VA care you have earned is to get rid of this sequester altogether.” The president...

The defense budget has always been collateral damage in the great budget debate over the relative merits of entitlement reform and tax increases. The current deficit is projected to total some $642 billion in 2013. The combination of cuts to the defense budget mandated by the fiscal year 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) and those imposed by the sequester amount to less than $85 billion, that is, they account for no more than a 14 percent reduction of the 2013 deficit. Clearly, defense does not provide a solution to the annual deficit, much less to the seemingly endless growth...

In the “credit where credit is due” department, one thing you can say for Lindsey Graham is that he clearly doesn’t care all that much about politics or future elections. The Senator was trotted out on CNN this morning for a chat with Candy Crowley where they discussed the current terror threat and embassy closings. An important topic to be sure, but Graham couldn’t help himself, it seems, and had to weave some comments on sequestration into the larger story with a side helping of praise for the NSA and the White House. (Hat tip to Andrew Johnson at The...

Patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and other premier military hospitals are being sent to private doctors and having surgery and other treatment delayed because of furloughs to medical personnel, according to interviews and internal documents. "Please show (patients) the utmost understanding and care while we are asking them to accept longer wait times and in some cases, curtailed or limited services," Rear Adm. Alton Stocks, hospital commander, told staff in a July 12 message. A "colleagues" memo issued in recent days says inpatient beds are in "critically short supply" because of furloughs of civilian staff triggered by...

Relatively few lawmakers turned out today to hear Pentagon officials warn that ongoing budget cuts would bring widespread changes to the military and limit its strategic goals. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Navy Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared before the House Armed Services Committee to discuss the potential impacts, which were detailed in an assessment released yesterday known in military parlance as the Strategic Choices and Management Review, or SCMR (pronounced "skimmer"). In the worst-case scenario, the Pentagon may have to cut 142,000 more active-duty soldiers and Marines, three carrier strike groups...

Another story has emerged out of the Department of Defense that the economic consequences from sequestration will be less dire than what was predicted. DoD initially projected that there would be 22 furlough days for government employees. That's now joined the long list of predictions of doom that haven't come true: Officials said no final decisions have been made, but they believe civilian workers will be forced to take six to eight unpaid days off rather than the 11 days that had been scheduled. The move comes as workers begin their fourth week of furloughs — a decision that riled...

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned on Monday that U.S. troops are “close to the breaking point,” after many deployments — and Congress risks worsening the situation if it doesn’t help the Pentagon with its budget. “Our people are strong and resilient after 12 years of war, but they are under stress — and so are the institutions that support them,” Hagel told the Veterans of Foreign Wars at the group’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky. “Last week at Fort Bragg’s Soldier and Family Assistance Center, I met a first sergeant who told me that in Afghanistan, he froze up and...

<p>President Obama is calling on federal agencies to use volunteers to accomplish their tasks as part of a larger effort to boost community service throughout the country.</p> <p>The White House issued an executive order Friday -- Expanding National Service through Partnerships to Advance Government Priorities -- to establish a task force charged with improving national service and volunteering. The initiative seeks to align the American people’s commitment to service with the missions of federal agencies.</p>

Furlough is here to stay for 2013, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said this week, ending the hopes of those who thought the Pentagon might yet cancel or lower the number of days of unpaid leave workers are scheduled to take through the end of the fiscal year. "We're going to have the furlough... situation until the end of 2013. 2013 is over," Hagel told attendees at a town hall meeting at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla. "2014 begins Oct. 1. If sequestration continues, which as you all know is the law of the land, that probably we'd see that...

The Washington Post has some interesting details of emails sent by Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) contracting and budget officers to their colleagues. “Our available funding balances remain large in all appropriations — too large to spend” just on small supplemental funds often required by existing contracts, the June 27 e-mail said. DISA’s budget is $2 billion. “It is critical in our efforts to [spend] 100% of our available resources this fiscal year,” said the e-mail from budget officer Sannadean Sims and procurement officer Kathleen Miller. “It is also imperative that your organization meets its projected spending goal for June....

More than 600 full-time military technicians in the North Dako-ta National Guard will lose a total $1.2 million in pay over the next 11 weeks as they are required to take off one day a week due to national spending cuts. The furloughs, which went into effect Monday, are part of the federal budget sequestration, a series of automatic, across-the-board cuts to government agencies, totaling $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years triggered earlier this year by the inability of Congress to compromise on a federal budget. On Wednesday, New York Congressman Steve Israel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign...

Remember when President Obama was flying around the country this year, warning that the budget-cutting sequester would destroy life as we know it in America? The President was hyperbolic about it, preaching doom and gloom across the land if we didn't turn away from the disastrous path Congress put us on. And Obama, too. He signed the bill that would send us over the sequester cliff if a new budget wasn't approved. The Pentagon wouldn't be able to pay its bills, he said. Federal food assistance would be denied to 600,000 low income women and children. Teachers would be laid...

More than 650,000 civilian Defense Department workers will begin taking the first of their 11 unpaid days off next week, but the cut in salary they will see in the three months may pale compared to what officials worry could be larger-scale layoffs next year. Roughly 85 percent of the department’s nearly 900,000 civilians around the world will be furloughed, according to the latest statistics provided by the Pentagon. But while defense officials were able to shift money around to limit the furloughs this year, there are widespread worries that if automatic budget cuts go forward for 2014, thousands of...

<p>American civilian employees of the Defense Department have put up with pay freezes and are going on furloughs starting next week, but German civilian workers at U.S. military bases in Germany are getting a pay increase.</p> <p>Some U.S. lawmakers say it's unfair that the German union ver.di, which represents about 2 million workers, negotiated a pay increase in June. Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., complained about the raise for German workers in a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel dated Monday and released by her office Tuesday. She asked him to suspend the raises.</p>

I thought I’d re-up this story from the headlines. White House fear-mongerers hardest hit: Before “sequestration” took effect, the Obama administration issued specific — and alarming — predictions about what it would bring. There would be one-hour waits at airport security. Four-hour waits at border crossings. Prison guards would be furloughed for 12 days. FBI agents, up to 14. At the Pentagon, the military health program would be unable to pay its bills for service members. The mayhem would extend even into the pantries of the neediest Americans: Around the country, 600,000 low-income women and children would be denied federal...

In the last few weeks there have been widely circulated reports about law-abiding pilots being confronted by heavily armed local cops and federal Customs and Border Protection agents who appear to act as if they have absolute authority to search and interrogate pilots and passengers. "At least 12 of our members have been stopped and had their plane searched by CBP for absolutely no reason at all," said AOPA spokesman Steve Hedges. "We've asked CBP for documents related to the searches, filing a Freedom of Information Act to get it, but so far they have been unresponsive." As always, it's...

It wasn't so very long ago that the Obama administration was very loudly and pointedly agonizing over the dreadful impact that the sequestration-imposed, across-the-board budget cuts were going to have on both the economy and the federal government's ability to perform some of its basic functions — which doesn't quite explain why it is that union employees of the Internal Revenue Service are about to receive $70 million in bonuses that were supposed to have been cancelled. The apparent deal with the National Treasury Employees Union is scheduled for Wednesday and was made public by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley...

<p>A wounded soldier receives treatment at a rehabilitation center at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.</p>