Congress Must Make ‘Unimaginable’ Defense Budget Choices: HASC’s Adam Smith

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/none-of-it-is-politically-doable-adam-smith-on-what-cuts-congress-will-accept/



Congress Must Make ‘Unimaginable’ Defense Budget Choices: HASC’s Adam Smith
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on February 06, 2014 at 1:30 PM

~snip~

The detailed packages of potential cuts rolled out yesterday by four thinktanks are a model for the painful program choices Congress and the Pentagon have to confront, Smith told reporters at a Defense Writers’ Group breakfast this morning. “But too many others are just saying ‘no,’” he went on: “no BRAC (base closures); no changes to the Guard and Reserve; no shrinkage of the size of the Navy. You gotta put something on the table.”

~snip~

“I never understand that argument,” Smith shot back. “It makes literally no sense to me.” There is never enough money to protect against all threats, he argued, so you always have to take risk somewhere. “Should we just (say) ‘WAAAH we don’t have enough money to save ourselves, let’s all jump off a bridge’?'” he asked. “You can either just go insane and start bouncing off the rubber walls and say ‘there’s no hope there’s no hope there’s no hope’ — or you do the best you can with what you’ve got, which by the way is what we do every frickin’ day” in our personal lives.

“I hope we can get past that, your plan is bad because it’s based on how much money we have instead of what we need,’” Smith added, rolling his eyes and making a curious combination of a sigh and a retching noise.

“We ought to be able to come up with a strategy whereby $500 billion a year is enough to meet our national security needs,” he added. “Unfortunately… as far as interest groups and far too many members of Congress are concerned, they’re simply trying to protect everything.”



unhappycamper comment: Not that it matters, but this camper thinks that our current military choices will do to us what it did to the Soviets in the 90s.

Bankrupt 'em.

[Turbineguy]

1. It seems hard to imagine

that we would spend less now than we did during WWII.

Apparently.

[Squinch]

2. But they could imagine cutting food stamps and unemployment pretty easily.