“People here on FR think this is a good thing.”
Some people wonder why, with a guaranteed $500B budget, the present Defense Department leadership cannot seem to accomplish things that contribute to our defense, such as training soldiers, and deploying aircraft carriers.
DoD budgets are facing a cut of less than 10% per year.
What our DoD leaders are doing is simply lying in hopes of preserving their bureaucracies. They are lying about where our Defense Budget priorities should be, they are cutting high-visibility things so they can pretend that the cuts are worse than they are, and they are exaggerating the real impact of a mere....yes “mere” 10% budget cut.
Since they are bureaucrats first, Americans second, they should be replaced by people who can take $500B and accomplish a reasoned, capable defense of our country and it’s interests.
I suggest there are many aspiring leaders who could accomplish this. The only people we know FOR SURE that cannot accomplish this is the present leadership - so they must go, immediately.
Also, we need Americans who care about the issue of our Defense to also stop repeating the bureaucratic lies.
Rather than focusing on what gets cut, let’s focus on what gets done with $500B in defense spending.
Why do you think the present bureaucrats won’t do this? I’ll tell you - because they’d be exposed for the liars they are.
Gay outreach over combat training, green fuels over much cheaper conventional fuels, police over soldiers....priorities such as that would come glaringly to the surface.
They are lying, and you are repeating the lies.
Stop it.
Unfortunately, I think you're completely correct. I've seen some MASSIVE waste of taxpayer funds over the years. You wouldn't believe how much money is wasted in-theater over in Iraq and Afghanistan. Example: my Brigade Signal Officer took it upon herself to purchase 50+ 7-foot tall server racks for our brigade. Every server in the Brigade wouldn't have filled one of them, let alone 50 of them. They just sat unused in connexes on KAF. And that's just one example of many, many others. This kind of waste is unsustainable, yet, to preserve the nonsense, the brass are going to do what governments do--cut where it hurts first, just to show how unfair it all is, rather than cutting where it needs to be cut.
This is all just a game, and the Soldiers who do their jobs from day to day are going to pay the price for it.
There is a lot of waste in every large organization, DoD is not exempt. What I have heard is that because of the way the sequestration is written, the cuts this year have to come out of OMN dollars that are used to perform maintenance. The fiscal year is almost half over, and I’ve seen memos (not secret, distributed among the workforce) that outline how the cuts would be accomplished. All 3rd and 4th quarter depot level maintenance on Navy ships and aircraft would be deferred. If this isn’t bluster and actually happens, what happens to the fine folks that work in the shipyards and at the Naval Aviation Depots? These are the guys that know how the complicated systems work and can repair them. Are they sent home? Will they come back? Will the brains of the outfit be back or will you be left with second stringers to get things going again? Who knows? It’s a pretty large impact when you disrupt regular workflow at this level. Not saying it can’t be done, but that there is a lot of uncertainty as to what the actual future impact will be when you try to turn it on again.
I agree that cuts need to be made across the board, not just DoD. Sequestration is like taking a chain saw into surgery. And it’s being done because our elected officials can’t balance a checkbook or pass a budget that can be passed down and planned for at a lower levels.
“They are lying, and you are repeating the lies.”
KMA
There are ways to reduce spending and this method isn’t even close to the best way.
The ONLY place they are cutting spending is defense. Heck they are even giving more money to sworn enemies and welfare.
So pucker up and KMA