Besides all the money the douchebag libs are saving on defense...it ain't going to pay down the debt. Its going to more worthless programs.
There certainly are things in the defense budget that should be reconsidered. Such is the nature of bureaucracies — all of them, not just Defense. The plan to purchase a new presidential helicopter fleet is among the items yanked off the defense table. But so are various parts of missile defense and, expectedly, the new F-22 fighter program. There has been a healthy debate about the need for this, and about how Defense can perhaps better allocate such funds to address the enemy we are currently engaged with.
As far as the White House is concerned, though, the debate is over. The F-22 is gone, and the resources are not going to be redirected back to Defense in order to do things like speed up the replacement of the M-16 “Sand-Jammer” rifle or invest in increased military language immersion training for Arabic, Pashto, Urdu, and Farsi. Oh, no. It’s back to Congress with those funds, so that the Pell Grant program can be transformed into “an entitlement akin to Social Security and Medicare.” Delaware’s boardwalks need another $7.5 million in federal grants, but defense? Pfffft. Get with the program, Marine.
The Washington Times tells you just about all you need to know about the instincts of this administration, which has ballooned just about every other type of federal spending and then invented a few.
The administration identified $11.5 billion in discretionary program terminations and reductions for next year. The Defense Department will take a $9.4 billion hit, constituting 82 percent of the cuts. Defense accounts for 49 percent of spending on discretionary programs, which Congress must fund each year.
The White House identified a total of $17 billion in spending cuts, including cuts in mandatory programs that mostly involve entitlements.
While we are conducting two hot wars — pardon, “overseas contingency operations” — and trying to find ways to defend against both asymmetrical warfare and the traditional conventional military threats that have not disappeared just because al-Qaeda attacked us, the only place Obama can find any waste is in Defense.
"We can no longer afford to spend as if deficits do not matter and waste is not our problem," Mr. Obama said.
To borrow a phrase from our current Secretary of State, then a senator, as she incredulously ridiculed then-MNF-I Commander Gen. David Petraeus: That “requires the suspension of disbelief” to take at face value. Obama is not cutting the deficit; he is cutting Defense and redistributing it back into a budget of social programs for the same net expenditure.
To understand this, look no further than Brian Riedl at The Corner:
Virtually every dollar “saved” would automatically go towards new spending instead of deficit reduction.
Here’s why: The president already proposed a specific discretionary spending level (which included these proposals), and Congress has already approved a budget that would spend $1,086 billion on regular discretionary spending in FY 2010. The discretionary savings proposals affect only the composition of such spending. Thus, even if the entire $12.5 billion in discretionary spending cuts are enacted, the savings would automatically be plowed into other programs to maintain discretionary spending at that pre-set $1,086 billion level. So this exercise is about reorganizing — not reducing — government.
Veterans are quite skilled at spotting dog-and-pony shows. We’ve been around the block a few times.
