Shocker: Obama wants to cut defense budget. (Update: Not so fast! Is that really a cut?)
I knew it wouldn’t take long for Obama to go to the liberal Democrats’ favorite whipping boy and start taking the long knife to the Defense Department’s budget. When he made the statement that he would cut government programs that he thought “weren’t working” it was pretty clear he was looking at the Pentagon.
The Obama administration has asked the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to cut the Pentagon’s budget request for the fiscal year 2010 by more than 10 percent — about $55 billion — a senior U.S. defense official tells FOX News.
Last year’s defense budget was $512 billion. Service chiefs and planners will be spending the weekend “burning the midnight oil” looking at ways to cut the budget — looking especially at weapons programs, the defense official said.
Yes, cut those weapons programs. I mean, after all, the enemy’s not looking for new and improved ways to kill Americans, right? Russia’s not rattling their sabers and China’s not putting any money into upgrading their military capacity, right? And it’s not like America is actually being targeted by people who want to kill as many of our fellow citizens as possible or anything.
Oh… wait…
Yes, they are.
I’m not saying there isn’t waste in the DoD budget and spending and perhaps there’s even that 10% that they could actually do without. But is there any doubt that there’s an equal amount of waste in other departments? I work down there in DC, I know there is and some of those departments and programs are up to a lot more than 10% of their budgets in crap they don’t need to be spending money on. If Obama were sending out the word to all government departments and programs saying that they all needed to find 10% in their budgets to cut I’d feel differently about this. He isn’t. He’s got the traditional Democrat sneer at the military and he wants to cut their funding even if it means cutting their capability. We’ve been down this road before and it’s never ended well. This time won’t, either.
Update: Hang on there a second. A second report is showing that the submitted 2010 budget has an increase in DoD spending, not a decrease.
Comments
Pingback from Hang on a second with that report on a Defense budget cut. « HoodaThunk?
Time February 3, 2009 at 08:40
[...] fact, that represents an increase of $14B, not a decrease of 10%. It’s not a decrease at all, regardless of what Fox News reported just this past weekend: The Obama administration has given the Pentagon a $527 billion limit, [...]
Comment from Ferraritest
Time February 2, 2009 at 02:01
Not a huge surprise.
Several months ago, Congressman Barney Franks from MA was asked by a reporter how the Congress would pay for all of these new programs that Obabma would implement once he became President and Franks said they would cut the military ranks by over 125,000 active duty personenl.
Sounds like the start of a “Peace Dividend” like the one after Desert Storm were DOD was directed to come up with budget savings that drew down over 500,000 active duty personnel, closed hundreds of military bases world -wide and sent billions of dollars worth of equipment, determined no longer required due to the lowered personenl staffing, to the scrap heap or to foreign coutries via a military sales program for pennies on the dollar.
Not a shining example of a political decision with a
deliberate, cost conscious process or thoughts on its long term ramifications to both civilian and miitary populations.
This drawdown did not save great sums of money but in fact has cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and affected the military community for many years after the fact; to include its peace keeping participation in Bosnia and Kosovo where contractors like Halliburton’s subordinate firm Brown and Root were used in great numbers due to the lack of active duty personel with specific skill sets to deploy and maintain logistics services in those troubled regions let alone our current military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.