Pro-defense lawmakers slam Pentagon cuts in dueling debt plans

The Hill ^ | July 30, 2011 | John T. Bennett and Mike Lillis

[Clairity]

The House's pro-Defense hard-liners Saturday stepped into the debt-ceiling drama, opposing the Pentagon spending levels proposed in debt plans put out by both Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) targeted Reid's debt plan.

That plan, which the House rejected Saturday, contains large but vague Defense cuts. Reid's bill would cap annual spending by the Pentagon and other agencies over the next two years at $1.2 trillion, while also assuming $1 trillion in savings as the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts wind down.

Reid's plan "would give the president full freedom to continue his domestic spending spree, while doing nothing to address our out of control deficit," McKeon said in a statement released Saturday. "It makes insignificant reforms to the real driver of our debt, entitlement programs, while hacking away at the dwindling resources needed by our armed forces to keep America safe."

[Clairity]

Defense is the one thing that is the responsibility of the Federal government -- Defense has already been cut in nearly half under Clinton and now the Dems want to cut it again, while doing nothing about the domestic spending, which is what ballooned under Obama, don't forget obamacare.

[Clairity]

Obama refuses to cut the obvious: obamacare.

Debt struggle could put Obamacare on cutting table

http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/07/debt-struggle-could-put-obamacare-cutting-table

“Amid wrangling over raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, Obama has rebuffed efforts to scale back his health care overhaul, taking a hard line that has left large potential savings untapped, some say.

Analysts argue that any serious plan to bring down the deficit must address mounting health care costs, something lacking in both GOP and Democratic proposals.

“Despite his assurances, Obamacare doesn’t bend [downward] the cost curve at all,” said Kathryn Nix, a health care policy analyst at the conservative Heritage

Foundation. “It’s going to blow up costs. So, no, we can’t take this off the table in the debt debate.”

[RecoveringPaulisto]

We spend half the world’s defense budget. We do not need to spend that much. A whole portion of our defense budget goes into overpriced gadgets anyway. There are a ton of things we can cut without sacrificing defense in the slightest. For instance, we have all but one of the world’s supercarriers (the French Charles de Gaulle being the other). We have 11 supercarriers, and we are planning on replacing them. Do we really need to? Not really. It’s just the philosophy of the DoD, which is another government department, to be a 100 years ahead of everyone else, and have 10x their garbage, and then they pay extra to government contractors for it. We are not fighting the Cold War anymore, and we can’t afford to pretend to.

[itsahoot]

You sir are a long way from recovering :)

The cold war is about to get very hot, not hard since it never really cooled, just hid away.

[Clairity]

“RecoveringPaulisto” — You are not “recovered enough”.

If we really had everything we needed we would have really WON the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not to mention that China and Russia are still arming themselves and weapons are proliferating to terrorist countries. The world is a more dangerous place than it was during the cold war.

[Clairity]

GMTA!

I just said the same thing, while you were posting your post. :)

[Steel Wolf]

If we really had everything we needed we would have really WON the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nonsense. We had more than enough tools to win at either location.

What we lacked was leadership and political will. Money can't paper over that. In fact, if you don't have it, you're just throwing good money after bad. To say nothing of lives.

[RecoveringPaulisto]

Against who? Russia? We could beat their tin cans with Hawaii’s National Guard (not really, but they do have really pathetic weaponry). China? We could cut our navy in half, and we could still send theirs to the bottom in short order. Furthermore, if we let Japan increase their military size, they’d be able to contain the problem.

Personally, I think the best way to save money would be to not necessarily shrink the size of the military, but transfer a lot of active duty soldiers to reserve duty over time. We have about 1.2 million soldier in both combined, with apx. half active duty and half reserve. I think a 250,000 man active duty force with 950,000 in reserve and national guard in case of war is decent. We simply can’t afford to have the large military we have.

As far as the “War on Terror” is concerned, we should fight it the way we fought pirates: Raids-in-force. They attack us, we find them and wipe out their camp. This wild goose chase through the Hindu Kush is just wasting resources not doing anything.

BTW, if I weren’t recovering, I’d oppose standing armies. Furthermore, I would believe the Islamic and Communist threats were made up to steal our liberties. Two very unwise ideas. I’m just trying to suggest ways to save money while preserving the ability to defend ourselves.

[Clairity]

Rumsfeld was criticized for not sending more troops, He said “we have to go to war with the army we have, not the army we wish we had” or something to that effect. That was making it very clear that we didn’t really have all the resources we would have liked.

[RecoveringPaulisto]

We didn’t apply near the full strength of our fighting power on Iraq or Afghanistan. We could have wiped out their countries, and we would not have had to touch our nuclear arsenal either. We spend half the world’s defense budget (that’s a fact). Part of the reason we do is we provide about half of the world’s defense. We do not need to defend Europe anymore. The USSR at the height of its power was a threat to the entire world, but modern Russia simply does not have the resources to be a threat. They are killing themselves with drunkenness and low birthrates, all thanks to the remnants of the culture Marxist-Leninism. As I pointed out, China’s navy can be sent to the bottom by half of ours. They are no threat in the near term. They might become a threat later in the century, but we can respond to that when it comes.

[Clairity]

Recommend you read this and learn:

Budgeting for America’s National SecurityPublished on July 19, 2011 by Jim Talent

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Testimony/2011/07/Budgeting-for-Americas-National-Security

“The issues raised in this Report are sufficiently serious that we believe an explicit warning is appropriate. The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition and force structure” (page v).

“There is a choice our planners do not have. As the last 20 years have shown, America does not have the choice of abandoning a leadership role in support of its national interests. Those interests are vital to the security of the United States. Failure to anticipate and manage the conflicts that threaten those interests—to thoughtfully exploit the options we have set forth in support of a purposeful global strategy - will not make those conflicts go away or make America’s interests any less important. It will simply lead to an increasingly unstable and unfriendly global climate and, eventually, to conflicts America cannot ignore, which we must prosecute with limited choices under unfavorable circumstances - and with stakes that are higher than anyone would like” (pages 28-29).

Much more at the link

[Clairity]

Rumsfeld: Cutting Defense ‘A Grievous Mistake’

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/01/rumsfeld-cutting-defense-a-grievous-mistake/

[GeronL]

How many of them just want their $600,000 10’ Gurgling Frog Fairy Statue back in the budget?

[americanophile]

I think by all accounts, we’ve won at both locations; it’s trying to build a post or nearly post-conflict peace based on western democratic traditions with tribal Muslims that’s impossible.

[Steel Wolf]

I was in Iraq when Rumsfeld said that. He was being asked about body armor and armor for vehicles, and why it wasn't provided before that unit had arrived in Iraq. That was like 2003, IIRC.

Either way, we soon got planty of armor. Our supply lines were the thickest in history. Your average Joe has more war fighting resources than the average insurgent by about a 50 to one ratio.

Leadership? Not so much.

Truth be told, the U.S. Army could have won the war in Iraq if we had shown up with spears, had we had better leadership that knew the mission and was ready to unleash hell to get it accomplished. We fought a nerf war and got nerf results. Ain't nothing to do with not having enough widgets.

[Clairity]

Defense Spending Has Declined While Entitlement Spending Has Increased

http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartbook/defense-entitlement-spending

graph at the link

[Steel Wolf]

I spent much of the last 10 years in Iraq or Afghanistan. Our version of 'won' is basically an endless series of live fire training exercises with live fire opposition.

We win every season, and somehow nothing ever gets better, and no one remembers what it was we were trying to accomplish. Then the old unit rotates out, a new unit rotates in. The new guys try hard for a while, then they get frustrated and sit on the FOB until the new unit rotates in, and they can go home. I've seen it a hundred times at dozens of different locations.

We can 'win' fights like that until our printing presses run dry, if we deem that to be a prudent use of our billions.

[Clairity]

US defense spending is 5% of GDP

Several other countries are spending more. The US either wants to continue to be a world power, or we will disarm unilaterally.

National Military Expenditure In The World - as % of National GDP

http://www.blatantworld.com/feature/the_world/military_expenditure_as_percentage_of_gdp.html

[RecoveringPaulisto]

The problem is that we think we need to be involved in all the world’s conflicts. It has nothing to do with lack of funding.

If there is one thing I dislike the Heritage Foundation on, it’s defense policy. On that account, they are pretty much apologists for the Bush Administration.

One notable problem that shows up in that testimony is where Talent said, “All the regional, religious, and ethnic rivalries that had been suppressed beneath the Soviet-American competition came to the surface, and the United States used its military to manage the resulting conflicts.” Umm, why? It’s not our business to be involved in all the petty tribal conflicts we are involved in, like Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The job of the United States military is to protect the United States, not bring about global peace, a job that will only be accomplished by Jesus Christ. We should do that as efficiently as possible, using tested military strategies, like raids.

[RecoveringPaulisto]

Notice: Pretty much all 27 countries with higher defense budgets as a percentage of GDP are either not all that large, or do not have a strong economy. China has the world’s second largest economy, but that’s with over a billion people. We have the world’s largest economy (~15 Trillion GDP out of global GDP of ~60 Trillion), so we can spend much less as a percentage of our GDP and still have a large, effective military force.