Posted on 07/30/2011 9:25:45 PM PDT by 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
If you find yourself there again however, remind our fine young men and women that they are accomplishing a great goal; they are protecting our nation. We have not had a major attack on the U.S. homeland since 9/11, Bin Laden is dead, and every militant who would have been headed to American shores to wreak death and havoc here has instead gone to fight the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been like moths to the flame, and it has likely saved the lives of untold Americans at home. That it seems to me, is the real victory.
Thanks for your service - be it military of civilian - that's a rough neighborhood.
Plus all of the eco-crap and PC stuff they load into the Defense budget these days
You haven’t got a clue. One very important reason our military budget is so high, is that we don’t have a draft, and we actually pay our troops comparable wages, mostly, to the civilian world. Plus our troops put in a lot more training, which burns more fuel and uses up ammunition of all sorts. That’s why they are better than those of other nations.
There are caps on the number of troops we can have. Those caps are totally inadequate to fight a prolonged war. Thus we’ve been using contractors to do things most countries use draftees for. Again, higher expenses. Of course there have been at least 2 cuts of 10% of the number of contractors performing such functions in the last couple of years. Also reservists. The reserve force is intended, and can only be sustained, as a strategic reserve. It cannot be used to provide troops that you only have to pay for when they are deployed or working up for deployment. The whole force, reserve and active, is volunteer and they can vote with their feet. The fact that the reserves and those contractors were needed to fight a couple of piss ant little wars, should be more than enough indication that the force is undersized.
Whole programs have been cancelled, or very nearly so. The Army’s Future Combat System for example. Even lower level stuff, such as training systems and testing instrumentation have been subject to the axe.
The F-22 has been capped at totally unrealistic numbers. As was the B-2 before it. Most of the B-1 fleet is not flying to save operations and maintenance funds.
Other programs have been cut back in both the R&D phase and the production phase, both of which drive up per unit costs.
All to feed the entitlement monster.
As far as having better stuff, yes we do, and wars are not only won that way, they are prevented as well. But we’ve been using that stuff a lot, and not repairing/refurbishing it as fast as we are wearing it out.
The politicians have been playing numbers games, underfunding the wars, forcing use of regular O&M funds, especially for maintenance. Then they have allowed transfer of funds from R&D and production accounts to make up the difference.
No we can't. We do R&D, most of the small nations do not. We pay our troops well, they mostly draft theirs and pay them very little.
Soldier pay is not that heavy, only 154.2 Billion in the overall budget of 685.1 Billion.
Our military budget breaks down as follows (in billions):
Operations and Maintenance: 283.3
Military Personnel: 154.2
Procurement: 140.1
R&D: 79.1
Construction: 23.9
Housing: 3.1
As for our wars, the problem is that we are not fighting this enemy appropriately. We are fighting our enemy conventionally and using anti-insurgency strategies. Since we have no intention of permanently occupying Afghanistan or any other country, unless you’re Lindsey Graham, we should be fighting this enemy the way we fought the pirate threat: Raids. There are multiple terrorists camps around the globe. What we need to do is identify them and send in a strike force (varying by target, obviously) to break them up. Along with mostly withdrawing from European countries, who are big boys who can defend themselves from an increasingly hapless and isolated Russian Federation, this can relieve the stress on our soldiers.
The United States Military needs to have a clearly defined global mission. It really hasn’t had one since the Cold War. It’s been involved in a myriad of minor conflicts, many of them having absolutely nothing at all to do with U.S. security. There really is no mission, and that is obviously going to stress our soldiers. We need to come up with a new foreign policy doctrine in light of new domestic and global circumstances, and from there we can determine the size and strength of our military in the coming age. As I alluded to, I think the new doctrine should be one of an America First policy designed to defeat the barbarian camps (AKA Islamic Terrorists) that threaten us. That requires a small, but effective, fighting force with a select number of small bases from whence to strike an enemy.
You are right. Recovering Paulista knows nothing about both Iranian and Red Chinese naval military theory, not to mention strategic missile strategies and tactics. Both are taking “swarming” strategy to new highs and new production levels, far beyond anything the U.S. Navy can handle successfully to survive. And the No. Koreans aren’t sitting there twitterling their thumbs. Ask the So. Koreans.
The Red Chinese Air Force is growing in both size and quality while ours shrinks to pre-Iraq or earlier levels. The same for our Navy. Reagan once had a 600 ship Navy. What do we have today, 200+? Not enough to take on the Red Chinese, the Iranians, and possibly the Russians if they join in the “shark feeding frenzy”, not to mention the North Koreans and even Venezuela’s growing Navy and Air Force (Cuba still has some sting too).
Recovering had better get some more therapy before he comments again or else someone will throw a straitjacket around him and tote him off to John Hinckleyville.
We do have a large, effective military force. The disadvantage the countries who spend more as a percentage of GDP than us is that they have really weak forces. One of our guys can whip ten of theirs. Furthermore, we are still at twice the global average, which is mostly the product of us defending large portions thereof. If we spent at the rate of the largest on the list, we would spend $1.5 Trillion on defense. For one thing, there is no way we can pay for that without keeping taxes at or near the high rates they are today even if we shrunk and ultimately eliminated entitlements and other unconstitutional programs. Also, 2.5% of the global economy would be taken up by our military. That’s just absurd, and it’s unnecessary.
And we don’t have allies? Why can’t the Japanese and Europeans help us? Why would the Russians and Chinese make war with us? We buy all of China’s garbage, they’d be nowhere without us, and they know it. We had a really small military before WWII, and we didn’t get overrun. We turned out fine. Why do we need to continue spending half of the globe’s defense budget. I repeat: The entire rest of the world spends as much we do when you combine all of their defense budgets.
A good chunk of the the rest of the world’s defense budgets lie in allied countries as well. Much of our Asian problem lies in the fact we still refuse to make Japan defend itself, despite the fact it is perfectly capable of doing so and shows zero sign of wanting to use that power to go on another quest for empire. Why can’t we let other countries deal with problems where they are in the world? Why is it the mission of the U.S. military to be everywhere? When did Congress get to vote on this being the mission of the United States military?
Thanks for your detailed explanation.
Some of us do appreciate it.
Thanks for your explanation.
Unfortunately many do not understand the details and realities.
Another thing Republicans should do is to explain these things to the people.
Nobody said we should be everywhere. We should be in places to defend OUR interests.
We need to be in other countries, so we can fight them “over there”, rather than wait until we have to fight them over here — I think that’s another Rumsfeld statement more or less.
Do you think we should just sit here and wait until Iran and N Korea nuke us?
What do you think the role of the United States military should be in the world? That is the key question that is often overlooked in these discussions.
Ron Paul’s answer is that there shouldn’t be one, and he believes any attempt to make us involved overseas is probably the result of a conspiracy to take away our liberties. That’s why I’ve come to believe he’s nuts.
My answer is that the job of the United States military is to seek and destroy actual enemies (those who have attacked, or are actively preparing to attack imminently) of the United States from small bases of operations (no occupations). Furthermore, we should interpose in conflicts where an aggressor nation is seeking to conquer and impose its will on other nations and regional players are not adequate to prevent this from occurring (i.e., Hitler in Europe after the fall of France). What else, if anything, should we be involved in, and why?
By the time it’s “imminent”, it’s too late.
And if we dismantle everything, we won’t even know when it’s imminent, until after it happened.
You are not recovering too well from being a Paulisto.
We can’t stick our head in the sand.
Look at all that’s going on in the Middle East now. I think that if we had a strong president and showed willingness to use our resources, if necessary, we wouldn’t have the Islamists taking over the Middle East right now.
Would it have been too late to save Pearl Harbor if the we knew what was happening as the Japanese fleet steamed out of harbors in Japan? I dare say we could have saved the fleet at Pearl and ended the war much sooner had we known and taken action against the Japanese threat. The problem I have with intervening before that point is that it is difficult to tell for certain another country’s intent before then. Christian just war theory demands near certainty before going to war. I am not suggesting dismantling our military at all. Furthermore, I’d put more effort into intelligence so we would know the threats that face us and be able to act accordingly. We should be able to respond to any reasonably predictable threat. I never suggested otherwise. I’m only suggesting we could do that with a somewhat smaller military than today.
Personally, and I know this might be a tad bit presumptuous, if I were President I would have the Pentagon draw up plans for the outline (much more detailed, obviously) I provided in post 33 and they could come back and tell what they needed to accomplish that mission and then I could go ask Congress to give the Pentagon the funds for it. I suspect we could do it with a much smaller military force in much more limited overseas military bases.
I do not think we should be involved in domestic struggles, like Libya or any other Middle Eastern country right now. It is impossible for us to sort out their problems. If they attack or are preparing to attack us, we should respond with the full might of the United States, but that’s not happening right now.
Defense spending has increased 44% since the Dems took congress in 2006. They’ve been very generous to defense spending.
Defense spending has not declined.
Why does ....as a percentage of GDP matter? What matters is the amount of metal we can put on target. By that measure we spend more than all possible advisories combined.
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