Posted on 06/08/2010 10:18:44 AM PDT by K-oneTexas
“There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness.” ~ George Washington
It is official. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn says we cannot afford guns and butter. So what happens? Do we fund the weapons or the troops who use them? One thing is certain: no one is going to be happy.
Last week Lynn confirmed what Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said during a speech at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas: Major cuts are coming. No doubt the library venue was selected because Gates had to pander to the liberal wing of the Obama administration by resurrecting Ike’s warnings about a “military industrial complex” and a “garrison state.” Old slogans never die, especially when money for defense is involved.
What Lynn said was that the Department of Defense (DoD) would kill part or all of some weapon buys in order to come up with $100 billion. Since the White House intends to flatline the defense budget for years, the funds made available by these new “efficiencies” will be needed just to maintain current force levels. What will get canceled or reduced? The crosshairs are moving toward the F-35 and F-22 fighters, the Marines’ amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, unspecified hardware and, of course, the troops.
We will not know exactly which weapons go on the chopping block until Washington finishes horse trading. Lobbyists worry about how campaign contributions promote their clients’ programs, politicians worry about factories in their districts, and the White House worries about looking weak on defense in the coming elections. But that $100 billion “efficiency” money will not solve the toughest DoD problem: the payroll.
No one in the Obama administration worries much about the troops and their families. After all, they do not have a union, and the White House figures they will follow Pentagon orders anyway. But the fact is, increases in pay and benefits that Congress will provide the military in the next few years will ultimately grow to unmanageable proportions. The underlying factor in calculations of military pay and benefits is the sheer size of the armed forces. DoD has about 2,250,000 people on its payroll, more employees than the Post Office and Wal-Mart combined, and is the biggest employer in America.
In just the last ten years the total cost to pay and care for each active duty serviceman has increased from $73,300 to $126,800. Healthcare for soldiers and families is also rising at an unsustainable rate. The Department of Defense budget now provides lifetime healthcare for 9.6 million active and retired troops, the Guard, the Reserve, and all their families. Healthcare costs amount to $50.7 billion, almost 10% of the entire DoD budget.
These figures have led the Obama administration to plead with Congress to decrease pay raises the lawmakers have proposed to give the military. One of the arguments used by the White House is that service members are better paid than private sector workers with similar experience and education. They cite the example of an average Army sergeant with four years of service and one dependent as receiving $52,589 as his annual paycheck. That amount includes basic pay, subsistence and housing allowances.
But another argument would compare that sergeant to a unionized US Postal Service letter supervisor who, with no risk of getting killed in a war, is paid $80,000 a year, plus significant benefits. Better yet, compare it to Congress. Our hard-working representatives on Capitol Hill gave themselves a $4,700 raise this year, bringing the salary of each congressman to $174, 000 per year, plus a generous guaranteed healthcare plan, plus a great pension plan, plus a cost of living allowance. That same Congress froze COLA (cost of living allowances) for those receiving Social Security checks—and froze it indefinitely.
The Pentagon must admit, however, current military pay levels have resulted in increased reenlistment rates. Recruiting last year was the best since the establishment of the volunteer Army in 1973. And 60% of Navy spouses wanted their sailor to make a career of the Navy, up from only 20% in 2005.
When all is said, what is to be done? The bright side of the economic meltdown, another crisis the Obama administration cannot seem to control, is that tight money will force a sweeping review of America’s global strategy and tactics. Assuming President Obama will allow our warfighters to name the Islamists as our enemy, and to allow them to study Islamist plans to dominate us, there would be a dramatic change in DoD hardware and research and development programs. Naming the Islamist enemy would also make us safer at home. The national interest is also well served by independent examinations of how best to defend the Republic against a multiplying myriad of asymmetrical threats. As we arm ourselves with better weapons against that death of a thousand cuts, we must also maintain and modernize our strategic nuclear deterrent—just as the Russians and Chinese are doing.
Of course, if we are to provide a decent life for the members of our military, their wives, widows, and children—and we must—then things like programs for $11 billion aircraft carriers should be converted into military paychecks, healthcare, and honorable retirement.
If we fail in this vital work, the Islamist barbarians at the gate and those already in our midst will subvert us and destroy our Constitutional liberties. It is already happening, President Obama.
The Constitution does not in any way indicate that the federal government should provide charity to the public:
We need to get out of the Butter business.
We can fund both by simply yanking out of the Defense bills all not germane items. The Defense bill should be about defense, not the dumping ground for everything senior congresscritters want funded which can not stand up to a vote on their own.
The crosshairs are moving toward the F-35 and F-22 fighters, the Marines’ amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, unspecified hardware and, of course, the troops.
Buttery guns, what’s not to like?
Obama has always wanted massive across the board defense cuts. He campaigned on it during the primary campaign.
If you don’t have guns, you won’t have butter very long...
Obama would not have it any other way.
Neither... Food and Medical supplies/equipment.
{This is to inflict maximum casualties against the only troops that Congress can directly impact...}
[/cynic]
Oh, they’ve already decided about the troops. Zero tolerance is back, and it applies to everyone, and it also applies to you if one of your troops screws up.
Gotta save money on all of those potential retirement benefits...we’ll just keep a guy for 19 years then screw him over on something that happened during his first enlistment.
And senior enlisted leadership has already bent over for it, since they’re exempt.
In 1968 total federal outlays were 20.5% of GDP. Defense was 9.5% while entitlements were 6.9%.
Entitlements first exceeded the defense spending in 1971, the the numbers wer 19.5%, 8.1% and 7.3%.
In 2009, total outlays were 24.7% of GDP, a post WW-II high, with entitlements at 16.1% and defense at 4.6%
Even at the end of the Clinton era, 2000, the numbers were 18.2%, 10.5% and 3.0%.
If you took out that portion of the defense budget spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and did not spend the "savings" on entitlements, then the DoD portion in 2009 would have been about 3.6%, and was only that high because the GDP growth was anemic in 2009.
I don't have the 2010 numbers but I suspect the entitlements and total outlays will be an even larger fraction of GDP than in 2009. In constant FY11 dollars the total defense outlays for 2010 were scheduled to shrink from $683B to $669B, then to rise a little to $708B in FY 11 then drop dramacticall to $608B in FY12, as O cashes in on the peace dividend obtained from pulling out of both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Entitlements, and messing with the economy, are the problem, not the cost of either guns or troops.
A quot from the same speech I absolutely guarantee a leftist will never bring up: "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite."
Perhaps one could call that a warning against the "Educational Industrial Complex".
Or how about this quot warning of the nanny state: "Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel."
"But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration."
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html
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