Senate Passes Lieberman Amendment to Increase Army by 30,000 Soldiers

Weekly Standard ^ | April 02, 2009

[nuconvert]

A press release from Lieberman's office, announcing the passage of an amendment this evening:

The United States Senate today adopted an amendment to the budget resolution, introduced by Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), to increase the end strength of the United States Army by 30,000 personnel. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Mark Begich (D-AK) and John Thune (R-SD) co-sponsored the amendment.

“Today’s vote shows that Congress is ready and willing to support those who voluntarily serve our country," Lieberman said. “This amendment is an important step in the right direction, and will help grow the Army to prepare it both for its immediate challenges and its future missions.”

[FlingWingFlyer]

Let me guess. All 30,000 have to be “gay.”

[PzLdr]

Since Il Douche is planning major cuts in weapons R&D and at least 20% in the military budget, what are they going to arm them with? Flintlocks?

[MaxMax]

Where will they get the extra ammo?

[okie01]

...what are they going to arm them with? Flintlocks?

Spitballs.

[mowowie]

They shall be posted around the White House.

[ak267]

30k for “urban” pacification. NYC, LA, Chigcago, etc.,

[Big_Monkey]

"What the hell do we need with more military personnel?

To put down any domestic resistance.

[reg45]

30,000 more lawyers for the JAG.

[Irish Eyes]

Good for Lieberman. There are certainly a lot of cynics here

[VeniVidiVici]

Since Il Douche is planning major cuts in weapons R&D and at least 20% in the military budget, what are they going to arm them with? Flintlocks?

We never had enough ammo for training under Carter. I left shortly after Clinton took office so don't know how it was there.

[kabar]

Where is the money coming from? Obama wants to reduce DOD’s budget by 10%. I guess they will have to cut more weapon’s systems.

[El Gato]

Even if the House goes along, which is far from assured, the "new" troops will likely end up doing jobs that contractors or even civil servants are now doing. Why? The Obummer administration has issued a "warning order", actually a Presidential Memorandumindicating that many things that are now contracted out, should be done by government employees. Real orders to follow in July and September. It fits with his general philosophy and that of others in his administration: "Government Good, Private Business BAD".

[El Gato]

Since Il Douche is planning major cuts in weapons R&D and at least 20% in the military budget, what are they going to arm them with? Flintlocks?

Nothing, they'll be repairing roads and runways on bases, posts and station, cutting the grass, painting the buildings and many other things now done by contractors.

[Thunder90]

They will hide this with a cut of 60,000+ reservists to balance the increase in actives.

[SeeSharp]

Those are going to be Obama’s tax collectors.

[KoRn]

"Let me guess. All 30,000 have to be “gay.”"

Or designated as 'fence painters' and 3rd world home builders.

[El Gato]

Actually The One is claiming to want to increase the DoD budget by 4%. But of course that is in "then year" dollars. So that really represents a more or less flat budget, depending on what numbers they used for inflation. Probably too low. But since he's increasing the number of troops by 30,000, cuts will be made elsewhere. Troops are expensive, contract labor, not civil servants (although they can be cheaper than military personnel as well) to do the same non-combat "tail" jobs is cheap, and you don't have to train an entirely new crop every 3-6 years. Thus we'll likely get a net downturn in capability.

But the Budget the House passed today, is much worse. (I don't know if these numbers include the "contingency" funding for the "deployments" to Iraq and Afghanistan. I suspect they do, since DoD's base budget for 09 was 515.4 Billion and the supplemental was about 66 Billion with other than DoD expenditures making up the rest of the FY09 expenditures)

(1) National Defense (050):



Fiscal year 2009:

(A) New budget authority, $618,057,000,000.

(B) Outlays, $646,810,000,000.



Fiscal year 2010:

(A) New budget authority, $562,033,000,000.

(B) Outlays, $606,043,000,000.



Fiscal year 2011:

(A) New budget authority, $570,107,000,000.

(B) Outlays, $587,945,000,000.



Fiscal year 2012:

(A) New budget authority, $579,135,000,000.

(B) Outlays, $576,023,000,000.



Fiscal year 2013:

(A) New budget authority, $589,895,000,000.

(B) Outlays, $584,670,000,000.



Fiscal year 2014:

(A) New budget authority, $603,828,000,000.

(B) Outlays, $595,476,000,000.

This is all National Defense, not just DoD. But you can see there's about a 9% cut in New Budget Authority (includes contracts which extend beyond the FY), and about 6.3% cut in outlays, which is actual money spent, and includes contracts from previous fiscal years.

But again those are "then year" numbers meaning the true cut is the amount indicated plus the amount of inflation, which considering all the money printing going on, could be substantial. Likely the rises, small though they are in the later FYs, are strictly inflation, and are likely less than inflation will actually be.

We is screwed.

Of course *we* know that the National Defense budget is no longer driving the train.

And of course while there are cuts in the DoD budget the overall budget is set to explode, making the DoD portion still smaller as a fraction of the total.