The Pentagon's phony budget war

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-070314.html



The Pentagon's phony budget war
By Mattea Kramer
Mar 7, '14

~snip~

Yet a careful look at budget figures for the US military - a bureaucratic juggernaut accounting for 57% of the federal discretionary budget and nearly 40% of all military spending on this planet - shows that such claims have been largely fictional. Despite cries of doom since the across-the-board cuts known as sequestration surfaced in Washington in 2011, the Pentagon has seen few actual reductions, and there is no indication that will change any time soon.

~snip~

In the end, the Pentagon shaved about 5.7%, or $31 billion, from its 2013 budget. And just how painful did that turn out to be? Frank Kendall, who serves as the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, has acknowledged that the Pentagon "cried wolf." Those cuts caused no substantial damage, he admitted.

~snip~

When it was time to write the Pentagon budget into law, appropriators in Congress wanted in on the fun. As Winslow Wheeler of the Project on Government Oversight discovered, lawmakers added a $10.8 billion slush fund to the war budget.

~snip~

After two years of uproar over mostly phantom cuts, 2015 isn't likely to bring austerity to the Pentagon either. Last December's budget deal already reduced the cuts projected for 2015, and President Obama is now asking for something he's calling the "Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative." It would deliver an extra $26 billion to the Pentagon next year. And that still leaves the war budget for officials to use as a cash cow.

[MADem]

1. Congress needs to cut the pork--and they are the ones who are at fault too.

They want to cut expenses, just not the ones from THEIR districts.

We need a few stovepipe cuts--straight down to the floor. That'll solve the problem.

It's easy to blame "the military" or "The Pentagon," but when they propose cuts and Congress refuses to enact them, that's a problem--and that HAS happened, often.

After all, all appropriations begin, not in the Pentagon but in the House of Representatives. Ways and Means, bay-bee!

Instead, they're trying to screw with pay, benefits and retirements. Not a way to retain a professional force.